The Ocean's Last Extravagance

The sun, a molten coin, slips its vault  

and spills across the water’s hammered shield.  

Each wave lifts a shard of fire, then folds it under—  

a slow, deliberate burial of light. 

The horizon bleeds outward in widening rings:  

copper dissolving into rose, rose into bruise-blue,  

until the sky itself seems wounded and astonished  

by the wound it cannot close. 

A single gull crosses the hemorrhage,  

white as a torn page against the blaze,  

its cry thin, metallic, already half memory. 

Beneath the surface, shadows thicken—  

not darkness yet, but the ocean rehearsing night,  

drawing the day down like a coverlet  

over something too bright to look at directly.

And still the water keeps its ancient bargain:  

to receive, to quench, to hold  

whatever falls—  

even this last, extravagant offering  

of a sun that will rise elsewhere,  

unscarred, tomorrow.