The oar descends through liquid black,
A blade that parts the veil of night,
Where living shore and fading light
Must yield before the ferryman’s track.
Between the world of breath and bone
And what lies waiting in the deep,
Where silent waters vigil keep,
The boundary is overthrown.
Each ripple spreads like whispered truth
Across the surface of the stream,
The ending of the mortal dream,
The passing of our days of youth.
Forgetting laps against the shore
Where those who yet draw breath must stand,
And watch the boat leave solid land,
And know they too shall pass this door.
The Boatman plies his ancient trade,
His shoulders bent to timeless task,
Behind his solemn, bearded mask,
While darkness gathers in the glade.
The river knows no dawn, no day,
But flows eternal, deep and wide,
A boundary none may set aside,
The price that every soul must pay.
And still the oar cuts through the black,
Each stroke a measured beat of time,
Each dip a solemn, silent chime
That calls the living spirits back.
The water closes where it passed,
As though no blade had pierced its face,
Erasing every mortal trace,
The first stroke and the very last.
The surface holds its secrets well,
What depths beneath the mirror lie,
What truths the waters would deny,
What tales the silent currents tell.
The mirror shatters into silver shards,
Where oar has rent the fabric of the night,
And scattered fragments catch the starry light,
Like broken seals on heaven’s sacred wards.
The sky above, the sky below made one,
Now split asunder by the wooden blade,
As passage through the darkness must be made,
And what was whole becomes forever done.
Each silver piece reflects a distant star,
That dances on the surface of the stream,
The shattered remnants of the mortal dream,
Where earth and heaven no longer are.
The fragments scatter wide across the deep,
Like jewels cast upon a velvet pall,
The broken pieces of the heavenly hall,
Where waking ends and souls descend to sleep.
The wood has touched what none should dare to break,
The perfect glass that held the world complete,
Where sky and water used to join and meet,
Now torn apart for passage’s cold sake.
The dancing shards spin outward from the oar,
A constellation born of violence done,
The many pieces of what once was one,
The price of crossing to the farther shore.
Upon the bank the lantern’s golden sphere
Contracts unto a point of amber flame,
A final witness to the mortal name,
That cannot cross the water’s dark frontier.
The circle shrinks, the warmth withdraws its claim,
While distance grows between the shore and boat,
The last connection to the world remote,
Where waking dwells and all things bear a name.
The amber point grows small against the night,
A dying ember on the distant strand,
The final tether to the living land,
That cannot span the gulf with feeble light.
The golden glow recedes beyond all reach,
A star that sets upon the mortal shore,
The warmth that cannot follow anymore,
The last farewell that silence now must teach.
The light contracts, withdraws its golden thread,
And leaves them to the current’s ancient claim,
While shadows lengthen on the waters’ frame
Like years that stand between the quick and dead—
The dream concludes, the final curtain falls,
The separation now complete and vast,
The present severed cleanly from the past,
As darkness answers to the river’s calls.
Upon the shore a figure stands and waits,
Hewn from the granite of his fathers’ creed,
His eye upon the vessel, not the mead
Of distant light—he knows the boatman’s fates.
The crossing calls; he comprehends its claim,
Has always known this passage must be made,
His judgment carved in stone that will not fade,
A soul prepared to answer to his name.
He stands in black, a shadow tall,
With garments wrought of ancient vow,
Where covenant and consequence allow
No softness in the righteous thrall.
His cloak, the hue of judgment’s night,
Hangs heavy as the law he bore,
The selfsame shade his fathers wore
When they discerned the wrong from right.
As rigid as the meetinghouse pew
Where generations bent the knee,
And searched their souls relentlessly
For sins the congregation knew.
In those hard seats his fathers sat
And weighed their hearts upon the scale,
Found every virtue weak and frail,
And crushed all pride beneath their hat.
They judged themselves before the throne,
Examined every thought and deed,
Confessed each small and secret greed,
And made their children’s hearts their own.
This heritage he wears today,
This mantle of unyielding stone,
Where mercy’s seed was never sown,
And grace was rationed, kept at bay.
His form stands straight, unbending, sure,
A pillar carved from Puritan rock,
Where softness meets the elder’s mock,
And only hardness shall endure.
The meetinghouse bell tolls within
His breast, a summons to account,
Where righteousness must needs surmount
The ever-present stain of sin.
He bears the weight of all that creed,
The doctrine of the chosen few,
The narrow gate that lets through
Only those who rightly read.
With hollow eyes that watch the flow,
Those orbs that witnessed judgment’s day,
When witches swung in Salem’s way,
And heretics were laid full low.
These eyes beheld the gallows-tree,
Where women danced on empty air,
Their final prayers lost in despair,
While righteous men pronounced them free.
From sin, they said, through rope and drop,
Through purging flame and public shame,
They cleansed the devil’s whispered name,
And would not let the hangman stop.
He watched them measure out each soul,
With calipers of doctrine’s rule,
Each inch of grace, each line and tool,
To chart who’d reach salvation’s goal.
By increments they weighed the heart,
And found, in their exacting sight,
That most fell short of heaven’s height,
And must from God’s own presence part.
His eyes have seen the casting out,
The shunning of the wayward child,
The exile of the one defiled,
Who dared to question or to doubt.
They looked upon the multitude,
And found them wanting, every one,
Save for the precious, chosen son,
Who kept the covenant renewed.
Of history’s tide, engaging slow,
That bears both saint and sinner on,
Though some have wrestled, pale and wan,
While others made but outward show.
He knew the ones who truly strove,
Who grappled with the Lord by night,
Who limped at dawn from sacred fight,
And earned thereby the Father’s love.
But most, he saw, were merely dressed
In piety’s convenient guise,
Who mouthed the prayers and told the lies,
Yet never put their faith to test.
The current bears them all the same,
The genuine and counterfeit,
Though only he could judge which fit
For glory or eternal flame.
To answer the eternal call,
The summons from his pulpit cried,
That severed the elect from wide
Perdition ere creation’s fall.
He heard what others could not hear,
The voice that spoke before all time,
That marked some souls for heights sublime
And cast the rest to endless fear.
From rough-hewn wood he thundered forth
The doctrine of predestined grace,
How God before the human race
Determined each immortal worth.
He steps toward the waiting bark,
With certainty the chosen know,
His footfall heavy, measured, slow,
Doctrine’s weight against the dark.
With scripture clutched, a righteous sword,
He boards to face what judgment waits,
Assured among the reprobates
He stands elect before the Lord.
The wilderness he crossed but spurned,
That dark cathedral of the trees,
Where savage spirits rode the breeze—
His righteous heart within him burned.
He could not love what God had made
Before the axe and plow should tame
These woods that bore no Christian name,
Where heathen darkness held its trade.
The ancient oaks stood sentinel,
Their branches wove a canopy
Of green-lit pagan mystery—
He named them each a gate to Hell.
What whispered in the undergrowth?
What moved beyond his mortal sight?
The forest breathed with appetite;
He felt its hunger, sensed its sloth.
His buckle caught the failing sun,
A gleam of order, wrought and square,
Against the wild disorder there—
The work of God and man as one.
Yet even brass could not dispel
The creeping doubt that gnawed his soul:
That Nature served a different goal,
And knew a truth he dared not tell.
The Indians walked these paths with ease,
They read the moss, they knew each stream,
They moved as through a living dream—
He called their wisdom blasphemies.
For Eden lost must be regained
Through toil and fire, through righteous war,
Not by embracing what things are,
But forcing them till they be chained.
The forest was his enemy,
A thing to conquer or destroy,
No source of wonder or of joy—
Just chaos craving symmetry.
He turned his back upon the wood,
And faced the clearing he had hewn,
Beneath a cold and distant moon,
He misunderstood the good.
The shadows lengthen, deepen, spread,
Each rustling leaf becomes a voice
That mocks his faith, denies his choice,
And fills his righteous heart with dread.
A twisted branch, a gnarled limb bent—
He sees the idols pagans carved,
The demons that their fathers starved,
Now hungry for his punishment.
His Bible pressed against his chest,
A shield of leather, gilt, and word,
Where every promise he has heard
Might guard him through this darksome test.
The darkness gathers, thick and near,
It breathes upon his neck like sin,
It seeks some passage to get in,
And feed upon his private fear.
Each whisper is a devil’s tongue,
Each movement in the underbrush
Commands his trembling soul to hush,
While psalms die silent, half-unsung.
He clutches tighter still the Book,
As if its pages might ignite
And burn away the pressing night—
But shadows mock the faith he took.
The forest will not be denied,
It knows what he refuses: grace
Existed in this holy place
Before his God was crucified.
He called corruption what was pure,
And named as evil what was whole,
The forest’s deep and ancient soul
He could not fathom or endure.
Where native peoples knelt in prayer
And saw the sacred in each tree,
He saw but dark idolatry,
A wilderness beyond repair.
The wisdom that had dwelt for ages
Within this consecrated wood
Became, through eyes that misunderstood,
The very thing his gospel rages.
He mistook reverence for sin,
And holiness for heathen rite,
Transforming every source of light
To darkness he must not give in.
The good he sought, he could not see—
It lived where he refused to look,
In ground more sacred than his Book,
In older, deeper mystery.
Thus fear becomes a righteous flame,
A fire to purge what will not bend,
All mystery he must transcend
And bring beneath his certain claim.
What he cannot in truth perceive
Must burn until it speaks his creed,
Replace the ancient ways that feed
On truths he will not dare believe.
His fury rises, pure and bright,
To scour the land of doubt’s dark stain,
Make comprehensible and plain
The world that fills his soul with fright.
The clearing opens, wide and bare,
Where soon shall rise his ordered town,
The stake prepared to cast them down
Who will not speak his single prayer.
His scripture and his burning wood—
These are the gifts he brings to give,
The terms on which all souls shall live
Who dwell within his certitude.
The book he bears is bound in black,
Its leaves are graven deep with law,
Each precept sharp as tooth or claw,
Each statute forged to hold them back.
Within those pages, dense and grim,
No mercy softens what is writ—
The righteous path is straight and lit,
All other ways are dark and dim.
He reads aloud the stern command
That separates the pure from vile,
That measures worth by trial and trial,
And builds a prison on the land.
These prohibitions, line by line,
Construct the bars that shall enclose
All those who dwell where’er he goes,
And mark the boundary and the sign.
The absolutes he clutches tight
Permit no question, brook no doubt—
What God has spoken, none may flout,
And all must bend before the Right.
Each commandment is a chain,
Each ordinance a lock and key,
To bind what once was wild and free
And make the wilderness his domain.
The iron clasps that hold the tome
Reflect the fetters he shall place
Upon this new and heathen space,
Until it bows and calls him home.
No deviation shall be known,
No variance from what is true—
The many shall become the few
Who speak in his voice alone.
The scripture is his rod and staff,
His instrument of holy war,
The cage he carries to this shore
To trap the soul and break it half.
His finger lifts and points the way
Toward shadows gathering in trees,
Where darkness moves upon the breeze
And nameless terrors hold their sway.
He names what dwells beyond the light:
Here Satan walks in verdant dress,
Here chaos reigns in wilderness,
Here all that shuns his God takes flight.
The forest is a moral stain,
Its freedom but a devil’s lie,
Its depths where heathen spirits cry
Must bow before his righteous reign.
Each shadow is a soul condemned,
Each rustling leaf a whisper vile,
Each unmarked path a serpent’s guile
That only he can comprehend.
He gestures as a prophet would,
Denouncing what he cannot tame—
The wild must bear his mark of shame
And yield its liberty for good.
His accusation splits the air:
What will not kneel must be made straight,
What will not serve must know its fate,
What will not pray must feel despair.
Upon the virgin earth he sets
His monuments of righteous fear:
The gallows-tree to make it clear
What price the soul that God forgets.
The meetinghouse with whitewashed wall
Where only his stern doctrine sounds,
The stockade marking holy grounds
Where grace shall reign or judgment fall.
Each structure speaks his iron creed,
Proclaims dominion over wild,
Declares this land—by sin defiled—
Shall bend before his holy need.
These pillars of his ordered state
Stand witness to his sacred plan:
That godlessness shall flee from man
And wilderness capitulate.
No compromise shall stain his work,
No mercy soften what is writ—
His architecture will permit
No shadow where the fallen lurk.
He calls his system without flaw,
Ordained by Heaven’s perfect will,
No mercy bends, no doubts instil—
For God Himself inscribed this law.
To yield would prove his mission vain,
Would let the serpent’s question creep;
His certainty he thus must keep
Immutable, without a stain.
Yet while he speaks of righteousness,
The smoke of pyres yet unlit
Ascends before his inward sight—
The incense of his holiness.
The scent of burning mingles there
With certainty’s perfumed breath;
He dreams of purifying death,
And calls his vision pure and fair.
Upon the carriage step he stands,
A figure carved from marble thought,
With truths that revolution wrought
Still trembling in his aging hands.
The lamplight gilds his powdered crown,
And catches on the parchment’s edge,
Where ink has sealed a solemn pledge—
That all men rise who once bowed down.
He holds it forth, this sacred writ,
These axioms of liberty,
Self-evident as dawn must be,
By his own quill and conscience writ.
Each letter formed with careful art,
Each phrase a key to unlock fate,
To build a new and perfect state
Upon the reason of the heart.
The document against his breast
He presses now, as priests hold prayer,
As though the words inscribed there
Could grant the weary nation rest.
But see—his left hand, pale and slack,
Hangs downward in the shadow’s keep,
Where promises dare not to creep,
Where light turns hesitant and black.
The fingers curl, though not in peace,
But round the cold and twisted links,
The iron that connects and clinks—
A chain that grants no man release.
How strange that both these hands are his:
One clutching freedom’s bright decree,
One holding fast captivity,
Both present in the same abyss.
The carriage waits; he does not move,
Suspended between creed and crime,
A monument to fractured time,
With nothing left he need to prove.
The scroll proclaims what shall be true;
The chain declares what is and was—
And he stands frozen in the pause
Between the old world and the new.
The scroll lies pressed against his heart,
As Moses bore the tablets down,
Each syllable a jeweled crown,
Each axiom a sacred art.
He holds it as the faithful hold
The testament of promised land,
Where every soul may freely stand
And break the fetters of the old.
The parchment whispers what shall be:
That tyranny must fall away,
That men shall greet a brighter day,
Unshackled in their liberty.
Yet downward trails his other hand,
Through shadow’s thick and choking air,
Where contradictions coil and snare,
Where iron speaks what he has planned.
The fingers wrap the twisted steel,
Each link a life, each bond a name,
Each rattle speaks of hidden shame—
The truth his words dare not reveal.
The chain hangs heavy in his grasp,
A rosary of broken trust,
Where noble words decay to dust
And freedom slips beyond his clasp.
Behind, where shadows gather thick,
The spectral forms begin to rise—
Translucent shapes before our eyes,
Like candle flames that barely flick.
They manifest in funeral gloom:
The man, the woman, and the child,
In ghostly fetters, meek and mild,
Emerging from their unmarked tomb.
Their mouths move silent in the air,
Each wordless cry a testament,
Each gesture speaks what language meant
But cannot voice in their despair.
The children reach with phantom hands,
The mothers clutch their babes unseen,
While fathers stand in chains between
The promise and the truth that stands.
They shimmer in the carriage dim,
More present in their absence here,
Their soundless witness drawing near—
A congregation, pale and grim.
They press toward light, yet cannot break
The shadow that his figure casts—
Their testimony from the pasts
More damning than the words they’d speak.
No voice escapes their spectral throats,
No sound disturbs the funeral air,
Yet silence thunders their despair:
The witness that his shadow smotes.
Each phantom strains against the dark,
To testify, to cry, to plead—
But muteness is their only creed,
And absence is their only mark.
He turns not toward their silent throng,
His eyes upon the path ahead—
One hand lifts up the scroll widespread,
The other grips the chain’s dark song.
Two truths within two hands reside:
The parchment speaks of freedom’s birth,
The iron binds a soul to earth—
Unreconciled, they walk beside.
His voice ascends like morning prayer,
Each syllable a trumpet’s call—
“Behold! These rights belong to all,
Let every man his portion share!”
The scroll unfurls its sacred text,
The wind doth catch its parchment fold,
Where inked pronouncements, brave and bold,
Declare what tyrants have perplexed.
“That all are fashioned equal, see!
Endowed by Heaven’s sovereign hand
With rights no monarch may command—
Life, Liberty, Pursuit,” cries he.
The words cascade like waters pure,
Each phrase a cornerstone of law,
To build what none before foresaw—
A commonwealth that shall endure.
“Let Justice reign from shore to shore!
Let Reason guide our noble way!
Let Truth illuminate our day!”
His rhetoric doth soar and soar.
The multitude receives each word
As gospel from a prophet’s tongue,
While Freedom’s anthem shall be sung
By generations yet unheard.
He speaks of dignity for man,
Of natural law that none may break,
Of conscience free for conscience’ sake—
The architecture of his plan.
The scroll doth flutter, catching light,
Its declarations writ in hand
That promised forth a blessed land
Where wrong would bow before the right.
Yet still that other hand holds fast,
The fingers curled ’round iron cold,
A truth the parchment hath not told—
The shadow that the light hath cast.
His voice rings on through morning air,
While metal gleams beside the scroll,
Two testaments unto the soul:
The promise and the dark despair.
Yet as these truths revolutionary ring,
That other hand doth grip the chain,
Each iron link reflects the stain,
The shadow ’neath the eagle’s wing.
The metal catches morning’s gleam,
Each gesture makes the fetters shine—
A sacrament and countersign,
The waking and the fevered dream.
Behold the nation’s primal sin
Made manifest in linked steel,
What parchment doth both hide and reveal—
The darkness dwelling deep within.
The chain doth rattle as he speaks,
A counterpoint to Freedom’s song,
The right hand blessed, the left hand wrong,
Yet both required for what he seeks.
Each link a soul in bondage cast,
Each rivet hammered into place,
The price of this enlightened grace—
The future purchased from the past.
The light plays cruel upon the scene:
One hand holds forth what Heaven gave,
The other hand doth hold the slave,
And naught but air lies in between.
No shadow crosses o’er his brow,
No tremor in his steady hand—
He speaks of this enlightened land
While holding fast the chain e’en now.
Two truths he bears without dismay,
As architect who builds his house
Upon the rock and upon the mouse,
The cornerstone and feet of clay.
The Republic and the auction block,
The Constitution’s noble creed
Beside the overseer’s greed—
He weds them with a founder’s lock.
Enlightenment and bondage twined,
Philosophy and whip as one,
What reason hath so strangely done—
Two engines in a single mind.
He doth not flinch, nor turn aside,
But holds aloft both scroll and chain,
The glory and the crimson stain,
The bridegroom with his broken bride.
Within the very cornerstone he laid,
This double covenant was sealed:
The freeman’s right, the bondsman’s field,
A compromise that shall not fade.
Through generations yet unborn shall sound
This constitutional refrain—
The liberty, the binding chain,
Together in the fabric bound.
The key remains within his grasp secure,
Inseparate from that enlightened hand
Which penned those words across the land—
That all men free might yet endure.
Yet still the iron and the quill entwine,
The bondsman’s fate, the freeman’s creed,
Both flowing from the selfsame seed:
A duality by his design.
The river churns with blood and mud,
Its sacred waters turned profane;
The Boatman rows through crimson rain,
Through brother’s gift of brother’s blood.
Where once these shores knew peace and trade,
Now musket-balls like hailstones fly;
The smoke ascends to veil the sky,
And corpses float in grim parade.
The vessel glides through thickening stream,
Through fragments of the sundered whole;
Each eddy bears a severed soul,
Each ripple breaks a mother’s dream.
The Boatman’s tears fall soft and slow,
Yet still his oars maintain their stroke;
He ferries forth the fallen folk
Through waters that no longer flow.
For here the current stands becalmed,
Congealed with sacrifice and strife;
The river that once gave forth life
Now drinks it deep, and is embalmed.
Upon the banks the cannons speak
In tongues of fire and iron breath;
They preach their sermon unto death,
And all who hear grow pale and weak.
The boat moves through this darkened tide,
This Rubicon of nation’s pain;
No crossing back shall come again—
The innocent within have died.
The waters bear their burden down,
This freight of fratricidal sin;
The war without, the war within,
The country tears its own bright crown.
And still the Boatman will not cease,
Though grief has carved his face to stone;
He rows through fields of flesh and bone,
And prays for some far distant peace.
As blue and gray in fury meet,
Their muskets crack like thunder’s voice;
Where once they made a common choice,
Now hatred makes their rage complete.
The brothers who once shared a tongue,
Who prayed alike and broke their bread,
Now speak in lead and answer lead,
While anthems once together sung
Are drowned beneath the battle’s cry,
The rebel yell, the Union’s call;
They who were one now seek the fall
Of kinsman ’neath the selfsame sky.
The Boatman sees upon each shore
The mirror image of despair;
The blue coats and the gray coats wear
The same grim face of civil war.
What language now can they employ
Save powder’s flash and saber’s ring?
What words remain for them to bring
But those which murder and destroy?
The vessel passes through their hate,
A silent witness to the schism;
This terrible baptismal prism
That splits a nation at the gate.
The cannon’s roar doth shake the bark,
And through the Boatman’s hands doth run
The trembling of this war begun,
These tremors born of brother’s mark.
He grips the oars with knuckles white,
As timbers shudder ’neath the blast;
The vessel groans as shot flies past,
And splinters fall like rain this night.
Each thunderous report doth send
Its shockwave through the river’s course;
The very water feels the force
Of this great nation’s sundered end.
The Boatman’s palms grow slick with sweat,
Yet still he holds his steady way;
Though cannons speak what men can’t say,
His hands shall not release them yet.
The vessel rocks with every boom,
As if the deep itself would flee
This orchestrated agony,
This symphony of nation’s doom.
The rifle’s flash doth light the face
Of brother turned to mortal foe;
In that brief glare, they come to know
The kin they meet in this dark place.
The trigger waits, the moment stays—
Recognition’s bitter sting,
As memory and duty bring
Their awful choice to end of days.
Too late the eye doth comprehend
The features known since childhood’s morn;
The shot rings out, and hearts are torn—
’Tis brother’s hand that makes brother’s end.
The crimson bud doth bloom and spread
On blue and gray alike in death;
The wounded gasp their final breath
And tumble to the river’s bed.
The current bears them to the wake
Of that dark ferry’s silent glide;
Both Union man and Southern pride
Are gathered for the crossing’s sake.
No color marks them now as foes—
The water claims what battle gave,
Each body finds a common grave
Within the stream that ever flows.
The Boatman’s shoulders bend beneath
The burden of this crimson day;
His ancient spine doth curve and sway
As war delivers up its wreath.
The gray-dark water churns to red
Around the oar he dips and turns;
The river’s face with bloodstain burns
Where float the newly-fallen dead.
The ferry moves, it must not stay,
Though carnage spreads on either shore;
Inexorable as before,
It glides upon its destined way.
Downstream through slaughter’s aftermath,
Through bodies broken, rent, and torn,
Through all the nation’s rage and scorn,
The vessel keeps its solemn path.
His shoulders slump, his head bows low,
For this is not the first such tide;
Yet never hath his spirit spied
Such multitudes of mortal woe.
The oar dips deep, pulls through the gore,
And still the ferry will not cease;
It knows no rest, it grants no peace,
But bears its freight from shore to shore.
The weight of crossing presses down
Upon his frame, so worn and bent;
Each soul a coin of payment spent
To purchase passage from the town.
The churning wake spreads red behind,
A trail of brother-blood and tears;
The culmination of the years
When men forgot that they were kind.
Past wooden planks the bodies sweep,
In blue and gray they tumble down;
No badge of rank, no victor’s crown
Distinguishes them in the deep.
Their faces bear identical marks—
The wide-eyed wonder, stark surprise,
The recognition in their eyes
That death hath quenched their mortal sparks.
For in that final moment’s breath,
When musket-ball met flesh and bone,
Each brother knew he was not alone—
But faced his twin across grim death.
The mirror-image of his face
Stared back from ’cross the battle-line;
The same blood flowing, his and mine,
The same ancestral dwelling-place.
Too late they saw what they had done—
That he who fell beneath their hand
Was born of the same mother-land,
Two halves that once had been as one.
Now past the hull their bodies roll,
United in their last descent;
In death at last made cognizant
That they had shared a single soul.
Behind the vessel’s groaning keel,
The fallen gather in his train;
A cortège stretching back again
Toward banks where brother-slayers kneel.
They form a solemn, silent queue—
These drowned who wore both blue and gray—
A funeral march that winds its way
Through waters darkened by their hue.
The procession trails behind the boat,
Extending backward toward the shore
Where cannon-smoke drifts evermore,
And forward where the shadows float.
Each corpse becomes a mourner too,
Attending those who went before;
The river claims them by the score—
A parade of death’s retinue.
The Boatman’s wake becomes their road,
This waterway of grief and loss;
They follow him who bears across
The nation’s ever-growing load.
The nation’s wound doth gape more wide,
As mile on mile of carnage flows;
Each battlefield its tribute throws
Into the ever-swelling tide.
The water deepens with their weight,
The channel broadens with their blood;
The river swells to meet the flood
Of all who perish in their hate.
The burden grows with every hour,
Yet still the current bears them on;
The banks recede, the depths have drawn
More souls within their darkened power.
The ferry doth not pause nor turn,
Though tears fall from his ancient face;
Each drop a benediction’s grace
Upon the souls for whom we mourn.
The Boatman weeps into the red,
His sorrow mingles with the tide;
Each tear becomes a rite applied
To christen all the nation’s dead.
The water takes his grief below,
Where countless souls now find their rest;
He bears them to the river’s breast,
Though anguish marks each stroke and row.
Upon the deck his shadow fell,
And deep the laden vessel sank;
The waters rose along the plank,
As one who bore the weight of hell.
His fingers thick with rings of gold,
Each stone a widow’s pension spent,
Each band a broken covenant,
Each jewel bought with hunger sold.
The watches chimed their golden hours—
Time purchased from the laboring poor,
Whose children died on factory floor,
While he adorned his gilded towers.
His chains were forged of others’ tears,
The links were made of stolen bread,
The clasp was sealed with those who bled
Beneath the wheels of grinding years.
The Boatman marked the listing side,
And saw how low the gunwale lay,
As if the vessel knew the way
That Mammon’s servants must abide.
The Baron’s coat, with treasure lined,
Grew heavier with every breath—
The golden weight that summons death,
The riches that the soul confined.
His boots, with silver buckles bright,
Pressed down upon the groaning wood;
Each step declared his station good,
Though darkness gathered round his light.
The water crept along the beam,
And still he stood in proud array,
As if his wealth could buy the way
Across that dark and final stream.
Yet in his eyes there flickered doubt,
A shadow of the price he’d paid,
When all his golden plans were laid
Upon the altar of his route.
From out his waistcoat’s silken fold,
He drew the deeds of half a land,
And spread them with a merchant’s hand,
The parchments stamped and sealed with gold.
Here lay the titles to the West,
The mountains signed in legal script,
The valleys where his profits dripped,
The plains where fortunes manifest.
Certificates of ownership
For forests felled and rivers dammed,
For cities where his railways rammed
Through sacred ground with iron grip.
He laid them forth like merchant’s wares,
Each document a kingdom’s worth,
The paper claims to all the earth
That groaned beneath his grand affairs.
The bonds that held a nation’s debt,
The stocks that rose on workers’ pain,
The contracts written for his gain,
The wealth that time could not forget.
He gestured to the paper throne,
As if these writs could purchase grace,
And buy his passage to that place
Where gold and mortal flesh are one.
The Boatman’s pole remained as stone,
No flicker crossed his shrouded face.
He pointed to the payment-place,
Where coin must pass from hand to bone.
The Baron’s smile, so broad before,
Began to crack like brittle ice.
His confidence, his merchant’s price,
Meant nothing on this silent shore.
He reached again with trembling hand,
Past worthless notes and gilded scrip,
While panic loosened his firm grip
On all he’d conquered, all he’d planned.
What currency could purchase here?
What tender would the Ferryman take?
His empire crumbled in his wake—
The deeds of earth held no power near.
The pole stayed still. The gesture clear.
No paper wealth would buy this ride.
The Baron’s certainty had died,
And in its place rose mortal fear.
His fingers found, through silk and fold,
Past worthless bonds and paper claims,
The spike—dark witness to his aims—
One nail of rust, one shard of cold.
This iron tooth, which once had bound
The continent from sea to sea,
Now weighed upon his palm—the fee
For passage to that darker ground.
He drew it forth with trembling care,
This relic of his empire’s cost,
By immigrant hands driven and lost,
And placed it in the Boatman’s stare.
Upon that outstretched palm it lay—
The spike that bound the nation’s breast,
Where laborers found their final rest
Beneath the rails’ unending way.
The spike lies cold upon that hand,
Its surface dark with rust and time,
Still bearing marks of toil sublime—
The hammer-blows that forged the land.
Across the continent it rang,
That iron voice of progress’ call,
Where men like cattle rose and fall
Beneath the sun while anvils sang.
Each dent and groove a testament
To hands that swung the sledge and died,
Whose bones lie scattered, scattered wide
Along the rails’ imperial bent.
The ghost of labor haunts this thing,
This simple spike of rusted steel,
Where Chinese blood did once congeal
And Irish prayers found no wing.
What echoes linger in its face?
What cries of men who fell and bled?
What dreams of those unnumbered dead
Who bought with life this iron grace?
The Boatman’s palm receives it still,
Unmoved by all its history bears,
While rust flakes fall like silent prayers
From empire’s cold and darkened will.
It weighs no more than any nail,
Yet carries weight of thousand souls,
Of broken backs and purchased goals,
Of progress’ long and crimson trail.
The metal speaks without a sound
Of fortunes built on borrowed breath,
Of profit measured out in death,
Of glory rising from the ground.
And there it rests, this token small,
This relic of ambition’s cost,
Where everything was gained and lost—
The spike that bound and killed them all.
The Baron stands with lifted chin,
Expecting praise for what he’s wrought,
This spike—the very nail that bought
A nation’s breadth from skin to skin.
He sees within its rusted form
The triumph of his iron will,
The destiny made manifest still,
The wilderness subdued and warm.
For him it speaks of vision grand,
Of progress marching ever west,
Of how his genius, manifest,
United sea to shining land.
He waits for awe, for reverence due,
For recognition of his name,
This monument to lasting fame—
The spike that split the world in two.
In his regard, the metal gleams
With all the glory he has known,
A scepter forged, an empire’s throne,
The very substance of his dreams.
He cannot see what others saw:
The price extracted, blood for gold,
The countless stories left untold,
The grinding teeth of progress’ maw.
But those immortal eyes behold
The truth that lies beneath the gleam:
The shattered backs, the broken dream,
The lives exchanged for rails and gold.
The Boatman sees what mortals wrought—
The mountains rent by dynamite,
The nameless graves that mark the flight
Of those whose blood this progress bought.
Each unmarked stone along the track,
Each coolie fallen in the snow,
Each sacrifice the Baron’s glow
Cannot illuminate nor take back.
The ancient gaze perceives the cost:
Not triumph forged in iron’s fire,
But souls consumed by greed’s desire,
The multitudes forever lost.
What pride beholds as conquest won,
The Ferryman discerns as shame—
A monument without a name
To all the darkness progress done.
The gold he proffers first rings false,
Though pouches strain with yellow weight—
Each coin proclaims his earthly state,
Yet here holds naught within its vaults.
His titles, empty as the sound
Of metal clinking in the air,
Cannot purchase passage there—
No currency where souls are bound.
The Boatman’s hand doth close around
The spike, that iron testament—
Not empire’s reach, nor monument,
But blood of those who broke the ground.
He takes the toll that labour gave,
The price of sinew, bone, and breath,
Of those who met untimely death
Beneath the rails, without a grave.
The Charleston kicks, her beaded dress
A blur of silver fringe that throws
Its light upon the water’s face, like those
Bright coins cast down in recklessness—
Those scattered pieces none shall claim,
That sink beneath the current’s pull,
Where coffers of the deep are full
Of treasure lost to greed and shame.
She spins, she whirls, her ankles bare,
The hemline risen past the knee,
A scandal to propriety,
Yet none remain who stop to stare.
For all are dancing, all are caught
Within the fever of the age,
Where youth and beauty take the stage
And wisdom’s counsel comes to naught.
The fringe doth shimmer, catching light
From lanterns swinging overhead,
While underneath, the riverbed
Grows closer in the fevered night.
Each bead upon her dress doth shine
Like stars that fall from heaven’s dome,
Or silver shekels carried home
From temples where men worship wine.
The water takes the scattered gleam
And bears it downward to the deep,
Where all such treasures go to sleep
Beneath the surface of the stream.
No hand shall gather what is lost,
No diver plumb those depths below,
Where coins and beads together go—
The glittering, forgotten cost.
She dances still, she will not cease,
Though every step doth shake the boards,
And squanders all her earthly hoards
In one last waltz before release.
The silver falls, the water takes,
The river moves, the dancer spins—
Thus endeth how the age begins:
In beauty, and the trail it makes.
She lifts her holder, slim and long,
And draws the smoke into her breast,
While far below, without a rest,
The engine labours, weak not strong.
The cigarette doth glow and fade,
Its ember bright against the dark,
A fleeting, momentary spark
That climbs where all such fires are made.
The smoke ascends in spiral form,
Like incense rising from a shrine,
Or prayers that seek the throne divine
Before the coming of the storm.
Beneath the deck, the pistons strain,
The furnace fed with final coal,
The vessel burning through its soul
To keep the revels in their train.
The reserves are spent, the fuel runs low,
Yet still the engine coughs and turns,
And still the precious substance burns
To drive the craft where it must go.
She breathes the smoke, exhales it free,
It joins the night, dissolves, is gone—
Thus do the careless carry on
While all beneath fails silently.
The gentlemen in white array
With straw-crowned heads keep time and beat,
Their palms together strike and meet,
While cheeks burn crimson from their play.
The contraband hath flushed each face,
The bootleg spirits flow within,
The illegal and unholy gin
That marks this reckless, lawless place.
They clap, they stamp, they do not see
How starboard dips beneath the wave,
How tilted grows this floating grave,
How list the deck’s geometry.
None mark the angle of the floor,
None feel the vessel’s rightward lean,
None read the signs of what hath been,
Nor heed the listing evermore.
Their revelry doth blind their sight
To danger’s slow and steady creep—
Thus do the heedless dance and leap
While doom approaches in the night.
She whirleth in her frenzied round,
Her laughter like to shattered glass,
The groaning timbers let it pass,
While thunder rolleth, distant sound.
From western shores the tempest calls,
Her spinning form doth faster turn,
Yet none among them doth discern
The creaking of the vessel’s walls.
Her voice doth pierce the smoky air,
And drowns the warnings of the deep—
Thus do the thoughtless dance and leap,
Unknowing of the ship’s despair.
A crystal goblet slips and falls,
And breaks upon the polished floor;
The music stops—one moment more—
And water laps the vessel’s walls.
The silence speaks what none will hear,
The rising tide against the bow,
Yet still the dancers will not bow
To truths that press so very near.
The saxophone doth shriek and wail,
Its golden throat distorted, bent,
As though some dire presentiment
Had turned its honeyed song to gale.
Each note that rises from the brass
Doth twist and writhe in tortured air,
A sound no mortal ought to bear—
The keen of all that comes to pass.
Beneath the boards where dancers tread,
A groaning rises, deep and low,
What timber speaks or credit’s woe,
No man can tell what voice has said.
The hull complains against the strain,
Or is it ledgers crying out?
The wood and wealth are bound about
In one inseparable chain.
The saxophone screams higher still,
Its player’s eyes are wild and wide,
He knows what swells beneath the tide,
Yet blows against his better will.
The metal bends beneath his breath,
Each phrase a prayer that goes unheard,
A desperate and final word
That speaks of nothing save of death.
Below, the timbers creak and moan,
Or are they bonds that break their seal?
The difference has ceased to feel
Distinct—all debts must be atone.
The instrument cries out in pain,
Its voice grown shrill with prophecy,
While underneath, relentlessly,
The groaning swells like coming rain.
What splits—the keel or credit’s trust?
What fails—the beam or banker’s word?
In either case, the sound is heard:
The rending of what turn to dust.
The Charleston doth possess her feet,
Her limbs are seized by frantic art,
The beads upon her breast do start
Like sparks from iron’s grinding heat.
Each sequin throws its desperate light,
A shower of embers, cold and bright,
That scatter through the fevered night—
The wheel that grinds exceeding white.
Her smile is fixed as plaster’s cast,
A death mask worn by one who knows
That what she flees shall yet enclose,
And none may dance beyond the last.
She whirls the faster, yet the dread
Doth rise beneath her flying feet,
No mortal step may prove so fleet
To outrun what the depths have bred.
Her arms fling wide in wild display,
Her knees do pump in manic beat,
As though velocity complete
Might hold the reckoning at bay.
But still it rises from below,
And still she spins in bright array,
And still the beads throw light away—
The sparks before the overflow.
The static crawls through trumpet’s cry,
A voice that speaks of ledgers lost,
Of margins called, of fearful cost—
But hands do turn the volume high.
The brass doth swell to drown the word,
The drums do beat the warning down,
Till numbers sink beneath the sound
Of saxophones that will not hear.
The dial turns, the music roars,
And drowns the voice that would proclaim
The reckoning, the sum, the shame—
The flood that rises toward the shores.
For better far the blaring horn
Than truth that cuts through revelry,
Than words of what must come to be—
The brass may shield us till the morn.
Yet still the static bleeds between
Each note, each chord, each desperate phrase,
A whisper through the golden haze
Of what the numbers might have mean.
The goblets rise with trembling hand,
And laughter splits the tilted air,
For silence would reveal the prayer
That none dare speak, nor understand.
They jest at words that bear no mirth,
And clutch the crystal all the more,
Lest quiet let them hear the floor
Confess its slow descent to earth.
The deck doth list beneath the dance,
The water speaks below the rail—
But louder still the jesting tale
That keeps them from the downward slant.
The siren’s cry hath joined the horn,
And none can tell the two apart—
The warning merged within the art
Of revelry that mocks the morn.
They dance because to cease the feet
Would be to feel the vessel fall;
The music drowns the water’s call,
And makes the dirge and anthem meet.
Upon the deck with solemn stride,
The Scientist doth come to stand,
His hat of broadest brim at hand,
Cast shadows long and deep and wide.
His visage worn by knowledge dire,
Those features etched by what he knows,
The burden that his conscience shows,
Of truths that set the world afire.
He bears the weight of atom’s heart,
The secrets of the primal flame,
The glory and the endless shame,
Of taking nature’s core apart.
What eyes have seen the inner light,
The dance of particles unseen,
The space between what is and been,
Where matter yields to purest might?
His brow is furrowed, lined with care,
For he hath gazed upon the sun,
And seen what cannot be undone,
The splitting of the very air.
The desert wind doth stir his coat,
As steady feet upon the boards,
He brings what neither prayer affords,
Nor any sacred text e’er wrote.
The vessel rocks beneath his weight,
This ferryman of modern age,
Who turns the scientific page,
And writes thereon our mortal fate.
His weathered hands have touched the clay,
From which Prometheus stole the fire,
And built upon that ancient pyre,
A sun to turn the night to day.
He stands alone, apart, bereft,
A Moses bearing tablets down,
But these shall burn and not shall crown,
The legacy that he hath left.
Within his hands that shake and quake,
A casket lined with lead doth rest,
Wherein a captive sun’s compressed,
A power that shall nations shake.
The box doth hum with dreadful song,
A vibrant pulse of captured light,
That strains against its prison tight,
And yearns to right what man made wrong.
Inside, the miniature star doth writhe,
Like serpent coiled in Moses’ hand,
It seeks to scorch the waiting land,
And teach the world its burning scythe.
The atoms split do cry aloud,
In frequencies beyond our ken,
A lesson writ for mortal men,
In fire wrapped within a shroud.
This sun in bondage shall not sleep,
But trembles with its awful might,
Eager to burst forth into sight,
And make the very heavens weep.
The box contains what none should hold,
The primal force of creation’s dawn,
Now harnessed, weaponized, and drawn,
A story that must needs be told.
He sets the casket down with care,
Upon the deck where waters flow,
And lo, the river churns below,
As steam doth rise into the air.
The molecules in frenzied dance,
Do bubble forth in wild unrest,
By atom’s splitting power possessed,
Recoiling from this dire advance.
The water boils at nature’s fear,
What man hath wrought it doth refuse,
The very elements confuse,
When split dominion draweth near.
The river knows what should not be,
And shudders at the awful weight,
Of captured fire and sealed fate,
That rests upon the trembling sea.
The deep itself doth cry in pain,
As natural law is rent apart,
By science wrought from prideful heart,
And innocence is forever slain.
With reverent hand he doth unbind,
The clasps that hold the golden fire,
And light breaks forth in dreadful ire,
A thousand deaths in one confined.
Not gentle dawn’s soft-breaking ray,
But brilliance seared from atom’s heart,
Where death and radiance ne’er shall part,
Spills forth upon the deck this day.
The compressed moment, terrible, bright,
Doth flood the vessel with its gleam,
More fierce than any mortal dream,
A sun untimely born to sight.
The desert waits beyond the shore,
To drink this gift of dreadful flame,
From wasteland unto proving-ground of fame,
Where sand shall fuse to glass evermore.
The barren waste shall bear the mark,
Where shadows burn to stone eterne,
And all the grains to crystal turn,
Beneath the fire’s unholy arc.
The Scientist doth clutch his prize,
The vessel warm against his breast,
A second heart that grants no rest,
Wherein the stolen starfire lies.
The boat doth churn through waters deep,
Toward that shore of dreadful fate,
While in his arms, both small and great,
The fire that angels dare not keep.
What Prometheus from heaven stole,
Was but a candle to this flame,
That bears no sanctifying name,
But burns within its leaden bowl.
He holds what mortal man should fear,
The very furnace of the sun,
Compressed till fusion’s work is done,
And all the heavens’ rage brought near.
Against his chest it beats and thrums,
A heart that knows no human measure,
No earthly love, no tender treasure,
But only what destruction comes.
The warmth that seeps through metal cold,
Is not the comfort of the hearth,
But fire that shall consume the earth,
When all its terror is unrolled.
He was not meant to bear this thing,
No child of Adam’s fallen race,
Should hold the sun’s unholy grace,
Or wear this crown without a king.
Yet clutch he must, and hold it fast,
This gift that curses as it saves,
That promises both peace and graves,
The first bright herald of the last.
The shore draws near, the desert waits,
To drink this cup of stellar wine,
Where mortal hands have crossed the line,
And opened wide the final gates.
Within, the captured sunlight dwells,
Where mathematics takes its form,
The fusion bound, compressed and warm,
In lead-lined geometric cells.
The equations dance in stellar fire,
A sphere that fits the mortal hand,
Yet holds the power to unmake land,
And raise whole cities on their pyre.
Enough to cradle, small and round,
This terrible and burning heart,
Where science plays its darkest art,
And heaven’s fury has been bound.
The war’s conclusion, wrapped in lead,
A prayer inscribed on every seam,
The fevered scientist’s final dream,
That counts the living with the dead.
What cities shall this sphere consume?
What multitudes shall turn to ash?
When light and heat and thunder crash,
And write the world’s atomic doom.
The promise whispered: peace shall come,
When this small sun is given birth,
And pours its judgment on the earth,
While all the watching angels, dumb.
The triumph won shall cast its shade,
Across the years that lie ahead,
Where children crouch beneath their bed,
And practice for the coming raid.
In schoolrooms bright, they learn to fear
The flash that turns the noonday black,
And drill the postures of attack,
While sirens wail from year to year.
The nations stand on terror’s brink,
Where each holds fast the other’s doom,
And in the balance, finds no room
For mercy’s word or reason’s think.
Assured destruction, mutual dread,
Becomes the peace that victory wrought,
The lesson that this fire has taught,
Where life and death are married, wed.
The knife-edge stretched across the age,
Where children of the victors dwell,
In paradise constructed well,
Upon a thermonuclear stage.
The waters ’round the vessel’s keel
Do steam and bubble, sore distressed,
As if the river’s very breast
Doth shrink from what it now must feel.
The box doth leak its fearful heat,
And lo, the stream begins to boil,
A harbinger of greater roil,
When fire and flood shall darkly meet.
The river recoils from its freight,
This cargo born of stolen light,
That turns the day to endless night,
And seals the world’s appointed fate.
Upon the shore, a tower stands,
Its clock face dark in silent dread,
The hour draws nigh when time lies dead,
And fate slips through all mortal hands.
The dial points to that dread hour
When counting shall no more avail,
When history’s book grows deathly pale,
And splits beneath the atom’s power.
The countdown to our age of fear
Descends toward zero’s final mark,
Before and after, light and dark—
The end of innocence draws near.
He comes aboard with downcast sight,
His eyes upon the glowing screen,
Where spectral digits intervene
’Twixt soul and water’s ancient rite.
No river doth his vision claim,
No current swift, no eddied pool;
But algorithms cold and cruel
That render all the world the same.
His countenance, a pallid mask,
Illumined by the phosphor’s gleam,
Reflects not sun nor moon’s soft beam,
But matrices that shift andask.
The oar lies idle at his side,
For he hath no need of such art;
His vessel moves without the heart,
Propelled by circuits’ silent pride.
Behold, he boards this sacred barge
With neither reverence nor dread,
His spirit to the pixels wed,
His mortal coil discharged at large.
The water knoweth not his tread,
The ferryman doth wait in vain;
This passenger feels not the strain
Of crossing to the realm of dead.
His fingers dance on keys unseen,
Composing symphonies of naught,
While all the wisdom ages taught
Dissolves before the blue-lit screen.
What prayers might lift from such a breast?
What hymns from lips that never move?
What testament of loss or love
When all is data, compressed, compressed?
The ancient boatman turns away,
His face grown weary with the sight
Of souls who choose the pixel’s light
O’er passage to eternal day.
Yet still the Coder takes his place,
Among the dead who do not know
That they have ceased their earthly flow,
Transfixed by that electric grace.
He speaks in tongues of binary,
Where ones and zeros form his prayer,
No incantation fills the air,
But whispered code, a litany.
The sacred words of ages past
Are rendered into bits and bytes,
No psalm, no canticle recites,
But algorithms cold and vast.
His lips move not in supplication,
No benediction doth he seek,
In numeric tongues alone they speak,
A digital incantation.
Beneath the boat, the water’s face
Dissolves to pixels, square by square,
The liquid depths no longer there,
But rendered into virtual space.
Each ripple breaks to fragments bright,
A thousand tiny squares of blue,
The ancient river splits in two—
The real dissolved in pixeled light.
The surface, once a mirror clear
That showed the heavens and the stars,
Now bears the weight of avatar’s
Reflection in the digital sphere.
What river flows in such a state?
What passage can such waters give,
When all that’s real cannot outlive
The screen’s insistent, glowing gate?
The ancient currents cease to flow,
But race as packets through the wire,
Each ripple now a swift desire
To reach destinations none can know.
The data streams in torrents run,
Where once the water moved in time,
Now information, stripped of rhyme,
Speeds toward servers, one by one.
Each wave becomes a signal sent,
Through networks vast and unseen threads,
To distant and invisible beds
Where meaning waits, its course unspent.
No destination can be seen,
No harbor waits upon the shore,
But servers hum forevermore,
Receiving all that once had been.
The river’s voice, once soft and low,
Now pulses in electric veins,
While all the ancient, liquid plains
Transform to streams of data’s flow.
The ferryman doth watch in awe
His passenger who codes apace,
Building towers without trace
Of shadow cast by ancient law.
Each logic-spire ascends on high,
Yet leaves no mark upon the deep,
Where waters once were wont to sleep—
Now spectral forms that multiply.
The structures rise in silent might,
No shade to darken liquid glass,
As algorithms come to pass
In towers wrought of purest light.
The light doth banish night’s repose,
Yet bringeth not the warmth of day,
But cold effulgence in array—
A thousand servers’ spectral throes.
Their humming riseth like a hymn,
Electric psalms in ordered rows,
Where calculation ever flows
Through circuits bright yet ever dim.
His fingers dance on keys that gleam
Like altars wrought of phosphor-light,
Where he constructs through day and night
Cathedrals vast to serve his dream.
Each line of code a promise made—
Connection shall be manifest!
Yet architecture doth attest
To isolation’s colonnade.
He builds with syntax pure and true,
The protocols that bind and link,
But standing at the very brink,
He sees what loneliness can do.
For every function that he writes,
Each subroutine and nested loop,
Doth gather souls in clustered group
Yet scatter them to separate nights.
The databases expand their reach,
The algorithms multiply,
Beneath a cold and cloudless sky
Where human voices cannot teach.
He thought that if the world could share
Its knowledge through his gleaming wire,
That men would lift each other higher—
But none do truly meet or care.
The packets travel, swift and sure,
Through routers spanning sea and plain,
Yet something vital doth remain
Outside the network’s architecture.
He types commands with practiced hand,
Compiling dreams to binary,
While missing what he cannot see—
That glass and wire cannot withstand
The weight of what the heart requires:
Not data streams nor bandwidth vast,
But presence, solid, holding fast—
The warmth that human touch inspires.
His cathedral stands complete at last,
A monument to his design,
Where millions come to intertwine
Yet leave more solitary than the past.
He watches as his vision grows
Across the continent’s broad span—
Fiber optic veins that ran
Through mountain pass and prairie rows.
The data travels, swift as light,
Through cables buried underground,
Yet distance greater still is found
Between the hearts that seek the night.
Each node he adds unto the grid,
Each server humming in its rack,
Doth somehow push the people back
From that which nearness once forbid.
The network spreads its tendrils wide,
Connecting every distant shore,
Yet men are lonelier than before,
With chasms none can now bridge wide.
He sees the metrics climb and soar—
Bandwidth increased, latency low—
But cannot measure what doth grow:
The silence at each person’s door.
The infrastructure stands complete,
A web of glass that girds the earth,
Yet question haunts him: What is worth
This triumph that tastes of defeat?
For every connection that he made
Hath somehow severed something more—
The bonds that held in days of yore,
Now lost within the network’s shade.
Within the monitor’s cold glass,
He sees himself in thousandfold—
Each instance separate and cold,
Each thinking he alone doth pass
The midnight hours in wakeful light,
Each face illumined by the screen,
Each soul believing none have seen
The vigil that he keeps this night.
A thousand selves in blue array,
Each one convinced he stands apart,
Each bearing solitary heart,
Each thinking dawn is far away.
The multiplication of his face
Doth mock the unity he sought—
For every connection that he wrought
Hath made him lonelier in this place.
He sees himself reflected there,
In every window, every pane,
Each instance bearing private pain,
Each unaware the rest do share.
The network pulseth with the cry
Of millions speaking to the void,
Their words compressed and then deployed
Through switches where the packets fly.
Each voice arrives in perfect form,
The data whole, the routing true,
Yet something vital passeth through—
The human touch, the spirit warm.
What once was sent with tender care
Now travels cold through wire and node,
Stripped bare upon the digital road,
The warmth that birthed it is not there.
The bridge he wrought to join the soul
Now stands a maze of crystal bright,
Where pilgrims wander, lost from sight,
Each footfall echoing the whole.
In server farms where engines drone
With all the yearning they should heal,
The glass corridors reveal
That every wanderer walks alone.
The river’s mouth doth yawn and gape,
Where inland waters meet the brine,
And all familiar forms resign
Their bounded and terrestrial shape.
The salt air cometh on the breeze,
Displacing scents of earth and shore,
While waves that speak of ocean’s floor
Do lift the vessel by degrees.
A different rhythm rocks the keel,
No longer current’s steady press,
But tidal surge and deep’s caress
That maketh all the passengers reel.
The estuary spreads its arms so wide,
As if to gather all who come
Unto that vast and final home
Where sea and sky are unified.
Behold, the waters lose their green,
And take the grey of deeper things,
Where leviathan spreads his wings
Beneath the surface, dark, unseen.
The vessel pitches, rolls, and sways
With motion strange and yet foretold,
As if the deep itself doth hold
Dominion o’er these latter days.
No more the gentle river’s song,
But ocean’s hymn, both vast and drear,
That speaketh to the mortal ear
Of journeys infinite and long.
The passengers do feel the change,
As brackish waters turn to salt,
And all their earthly thoughts do halt
Before this prospect wild and strange.
The mouth yawns wider still, and lo,
The boundaries of land recede,
And all who sail must now concede
To depths unmeasured far below.
The Boatman’s hand upon the tiller lies,
With practiced sureness, firm and true,
As he doth steer the vessel through
Toward that expanse where ocean meets the skies.
Away from shores that mortals know,
From harbors safe and landings sure,
He guides them to a realm more pure,
Where bounded things no longer go.
The tiller turns with steady grace,
No hesitation marks his art,
As if he knows by ancient chart
The coordinates of that unbounded place.
His certainty doth not console,
Yet neither doth it bring despair,
But rather speaks of one who’s there
To ferry each immortal soul.
The limitless expanse doth spread,
Where water merges into air,
And all distinctions vanish where
The living journey to the dead.
He steers them from the world they knew,
With hands that shall not fail nor tire,
Toward that which mortals most desire
And most do dread to travel through.
Each passenger doth feel the change,
The current’s loosening, the release,
As struggle yields at last to peace,
And all resistance grows more strange.
The boat no longer fights the tide,
But drifts upon a greater will,
Surrendering, obedient still,
To that which shall not be denied.
The river’s force hath passed away,
And something vaster takes its stead,
A power that doth draw the dead
Beyond the boundaries of day.
They feel it in the vessel’s sway,
This yielding to a force more grand,
As if some vast and unseen hand
Now guides them on their final way.
The current that once bore them down
Hath merged into a deeper flow,
And they must trust where they shall go,
Though all familiar things do drown.
The horizon darkens like a bruise,
In purple depths that swell and spread,
Where last light falls upon the dead
And distant waves their course pursue.
The swells roll forth from distances
Beyond all mortal reckoning,
Each wave a vast and solemn thing
That speaks of final passages.
The light doth catch upon each crest,
A fleeting gleam, a golden trace,
That marks the boundary of space
Where all the weary come to rest.
No tongue may speak what lies before,
When journey’s force doth ebb and wane,
And all must face what doth remain
Beyond the sight of mortal shore.
The threshold looms, a silent gate,
Where motion fails and stillness grows,
And each soul in its terror knows
The vast unknown that doth await.
Upon the rail their hands do rest,
The metal cold as winter’s breath,
Each soul alone confronts its death,
And bears the weight within its breast.
The vessel slows, no longer drawn
By current’s pull or helmsman’s will,
But drifts upon the waters still,
As night devours the final dawn.
In solitude each figure stands,
Though shoulder pressed to shoulder near,
For none may share another’s fear,
Nor loose the grip of trembling hands.
What private reckoning doth come
When motion ceases, journey ends,
And no companion, no, nor friends,
May speak to break the silence dumb?
The void approaches, dark and wide,
A gulf that swallows hope and light,
Where day surrenders unto night,
And all must cross the final tide.
They stand as statues carved from stone,
Each countenance turned toward the deep,
Where secrets that the waters keep
Shall claim what each hath called their own.
No word is spoken, no lament,
For language fails before this hour,
When mortal strength and mortal power
Are proven vain, their purpose spent.
The railing holds them fast in place,
This last connection to the world,
As into darkness they are hurled,
To meet the void they cannot face.
Yet still they stand, and still they wait,
Though terror grips each beating heart,
For this is now their only part—
To drift in silence toward their fate.
The darkness spreads like ink outpoured,
Across the waters deep and wide,
Erasing every boundary’s guide
’Twixt heaven’s vault and ocean’s floor.
No line divides the sea from sky,
No mark remains to show the seam,
As if the world were but a dream
That fades before the waking eye.
The ship alone persists, a spark
Of feeble light in endless night,
A fragile isle of failing light
Suspended in the pressing dark.
This vessel, all that yet remains
Of substance in the void’s expanse,
Drifts through the black infinitude’s trance,
While nothingness surrounds, constrains.
No shore, no star, no distant gleam
To mark their passage through the deep,
Where boundaries no longer keep
Their forms, but merge in shadow’s stream.
The lamp-light trembles, weak and small,
Against the vast encroaching gloom,
A candle in a cavernous tomb,
Where darkness threatens to consume all.
They feel the weight of paths once trod,
Each crossroad where they made their stand,
Each moment when the trembling hand
Reached out to grasp or turned from God.
Not sorrow stains these memories clear,
But knowledge absolute and stark—
The recognition in the dark
Of all that brought them to this pier.
No turning back remains for those
Who see at last the pattern whole,
The tapestry of every soul
Revealed from genesis to close.
Each choice, each deed, each whispered word
Now stands in terrible array,
Illuminated by the day
That dawns when all accounts are heard.
They comprehend, with vision true,
The thread that led through joy and pain,
The golden cord, the binding chain,
That drew them to this final view.
The Boatman’s form, in shadow cast,
Stands silent at the vessel’s wheel,
No word of mercy to reveal,
No judgment spoken, first or last.
His hand lies steady on the helm,
No comfort offered, none denied,
But only this: the faithful guide
Who steers through every mortal realm.
For all who journey must embark
Upon this passage, known of old,
Where neither warmth nor bitter cold
Attends the crossing through the dark.
Each soul beholds what once was wrought,
The measure of their earthly days,
No flight from truth, no hidden ways,
But all they were and all they sought.
Not journey’s end nor sweet release,
But reckoning with what has been,
The self made whole, at last made clean,
In this acceptance finding peace.