Excalibur

The Moon's flat face slides full and calm

across the still dark water as night turns

the polished sleek obsidian world in its palm

and by a lakeside a silent watcher waits. 

A sword tip splits the water's skin, rewards

his vigil, and a blade ascends, bursts

the membrane between two worlds,

apart but akin, in eerie birth. The ripples

bend and twist the Moon into a cloud of doves.

Child of ice and lightning,

swift silent thunder strike,

your gleaming peal divests the night

of its dark veil, and ushers into sight

the worthy youth who wields the elements

and leads them in the world's first dance,

as dawn's bright shards scatter in flight

across the sky and crown the day with light.

But who waits now in the grim arithmetic

of days, and watches now for your return?

Our fleshes flow and sink in unsought union

with the subsidence of age, the water-lilies

of our youth now liver spots. We lie

beneath what counts as stars in our sad sky,

and bury the blunt promises of youth

beneath the dull diurnal dump of time.