Eclipse

You have taken away my names.
Last night the loon was crying for you, one call
after another, a ripple of clearest water
virgin and pure, cut off from the source, a mouth
of tumbled grief.
The wind was looking for you. Searching
the trees, scaling the tall pines and knotted
salt oaks, the Spanish moss whispering, asking
the roots
where you have gone.
And long after midnight,
when what was left of the sun’s looking
glass showed its face, it hid its broken reflection
in the clouds, the low long banks of fog,
a scrap
of used paper, old parchment, ashamed to be seen.
How can I come to you, without a syllable
of my own? Only this begging
bowl,
poor battered cup of my heart where once given
to feeling
now emptiness steals, catching at each new
breath which, like the shore
air over these waters, these sands,
slips
and runs away.
A keel taking on water,
sail luffing and spilling the wind,
tiller awash in tide and wave
you have set me adrift
in the night where I float without compass anchor
or star.