Body of Oceans

for my Grandfather

Photo: © David Whyte

Body of Oceans

for my Grandfather, dying in a hospital ward.

Body immobile
body of oceans
confluence of arms and legs
whose arteries have met all these years
in the city and shorefronts
of muscle and sinew
do not go
where the sun tortures by day
and the night no longer
whispers its eternal things.

Body resisted
body unmoved
by sufferi…