Why does the dead fish still stir
toward the unbitten bait,
the bait it sought in a dream,
in a life long cast adrift?
Its body drifts now, a silver ghost,
yet a yearning remains, hooked,
twisting in the pendulum’s slow breath,
boxed in the clock’s whisper,
caught in a tide of waiting.
But when the bait arrives,
the fish is gone,
for it was never hunger,
but the shadow of a promise,
a thirst for the unseen hook
beneath the surface of longing.
Two souls—each a lure for the other,
whose only meeting was to miss,
whose only union was to be lost—
to fulfill infinity
by spiraling to zero,
into the sand’s silent throat,
where time’s grains pour,
and emptiness is the only pattern,
a void that overflows.
The only way to find each other
was to surrender the search,
to be nothing but the whisper
of a wave folding back,
a breath caught in the cosmos,
the ache of being,
caught between hook and bait,
between hunger and the hand.
