castaway

denizens seen through cobalt blue
we die just as the potters do
the storm returns, the fear comes back
amid ranks of clay on drying racks

you sent me south
you cast me out
in wilderness
held within
a jar of scarlet
a blood-stained mouth

my absence seen in endless shades
tortured jungle and palisades
of irgazine and viridian
existence cast in cadmium

fevered, i sought
your tempered face
in every tree
nickeled vine
titanium place
and yellowed rot

the void of onyx in darkest night
distance without a speck of white
yet memory froze in kaolin
bright as sunlit silk stretched thin

Cast"a*way (?), n.

1.

One who, or that which, is cast away or shipwrecked.

2.

One who is ruined; one who has made moral shipwreck; a reprobate.

Lest . . . when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. 1 Cor. ix. 27.

 

© Webster 1913.