MORROW LINDBERGH, Anne


Within the Wave

Within the hollow wave there lies a world,

gleaming glass-perfect, rising to be hurled

into a thousand fragments on the sand,

driven by tide's inexorable hand.

Now in the instant while disaster towers,

I glimpse the land more beautiful than ours,

another sky, more lapis-lazuli,

lit by unsetting suns, another sea

by no horizon bound, another shore,

glistening with shells I never saw before.

Smooth mirror of the present, poised between

the crest's "becoming" and the foam's "has-been" -

how luminous the landscape seen across

the crystal lens of an impending loss!