Why I Go On

Because I can sense it
in the loons
stitching
the flooding sound, equable
on the puce & copen-plaited water
then under,
then reappearing
a measure north or south

again; in
how like love
these intentional divers
really are, binding
this lowering sky, this
rising sea, discovering
the balance between
patience

& passion. Because I can feel it
in the absence of the summer
swallows each new fall,
loss quickening
within the sentinel cliffs
they've left behind—the heart
so suceptible without
its mind's flywheels

to save it. I go on
for having given in
to resiliency, the work
of this forever
fluctuate world, epochal
year after epochal: loon over &
under its blue-aqueous fabric or swallow

in eternal flight . . . gone & here

& gone again.