Salt Water’s Wraiths

             Salt Water’s Wraiths

The snow that hits Alantic waves is lost.

The flakes give up their six-point shapes and souls.

They lose their lives.  A frosty Pentecost

Does not redeem with icy tongues.  The poles,

Both north and south, condemn the frozen stars

To breakers and to billows.  Calvin bangs

Predestinated crystals.  No memoirs

Are written.  Flakes are not allowed brief pangs,

Not even that.  They disappear.  That’s all.

If hail falls, mixed in with these deaths, its ghost

Is even less, much shorter than the squall.

Chill corpses wash up on a god-like coast.

  Non-Arctic raindrops disappear as well.

    They plink near silently in wet depth hell.

Phillip Whidden