The Tempest’s Canvas
A Recollection Etched in Salt and Sable
the painter, gaunt as winter’s withered hand,
his palette choked with pigments of the storm:
indigo for thunder, ash for waves half-born,
a smear of gold—the ghost of suns deceased.
The cliffs, like broken teeth, gnash east to east,
and every crest that crashes, foaming white,
carves deeper still the hollows of his sight.
*“What muse resides in such tempestuous throats?”*
he asks the gale, which rips the words from throat
and flings them where the gulls’ lost cries disband.
No answer comes but salt upon his hand,
the same that stung his cheeks when, as a boy,
he watched the ship surrender to destroy—
its mast a crucifix against the spray,
its hull devoured by the maw of gray.
*“Remember,”* whispers surf through splintered stone.
*“Remember when the world was not your own,*
but hers—the one who cupped the sea in glass,
who spun the tides to music as you passed?
Her voice, a lullaby no storm could drown,
her hands, which sketched the stars to calm your frown…
Then came the morn the ocean claimed its debt—
her shawl, your tears, the vow she would forget.”
He stumbles where the rocks like scimitars rise,
each step a dirge for shores where memory lies.
The brush, once poised to conquer vacant air,
now quivers like the mast that once hung there.
A child’s wail resurges in the squall:
*“Do not board that ship! The waves will fall!*
*They always lie!”* But men in coats of wool
spoke of fortunes, while the sea pulled
her from his grip—her fingers, thin as twine,
unraveling from his. A final sign:
three strokes of brow, a kiss to freeze the ache,
then silence, save the tide’s insatiate break.
Decades later, shadows still retain
her silhouette—the way she turned to rain,
the smudge of gray where ship and child parted.
Now, canvas after canvas, empty-hearted,
he daubs at ghosts no pigment can restore.
The storm, relentless, batters cliff and core,
until at last, his fingers numb with cold
trace not the sea, but locks of hair long lost—
the ochre of her braids, the sienna of her trust.
And in that moment, clarity descends:
his masterpiece was never sea, but *ends*—
the space between a breath and its decay,
the hues of absence no dawn can outweigh.
He flings his brushes to the ravenous foam.
*“Take them. All I am is hers, and home.”*
The waves, in answer, roar with borrowed breath,
then drag him where the seafloor cradles death.
No dirge is sung, no stone bears his name,
just whispers in the brine of whence he came:
a boy who loved a woman made of tides,
whose art, like her, the vast Atlantic hides.
And sometimes, when the tempest veils its ire,
two shadows dance above the fading pyre—
one tracing waves in air, the other, still,
her palm outstretched to tame the endless chill.
Epilogue
only a child’s shell, cracked and salt-bent,
its spirals echoing a lullaby’s refrain:
*“What the sea devours, it guards again.”*
