The golden light pours through the dawn's sky

Illuminating the black salt water and debris

And grasping on the moist wreck are frail men

Ocean venturers battered by last night's storm

Their throats parched with the taste of the sea

Yet even as their mouths are burning with thirst

Their lips are still restlessly chanting prayers of plea

As if the angels would whisk away the trail of the cloudburst

Their wives and children miles away, knowing not of their fate

Oblivious to the waves that drowned them with inordinate weight

Brothers, husbands, and fathers seized as the waters abate

Disappearing under, while their beloveds await

Nothing can come to any fruition or good

Not on the dying moon or the greeting gulls

Survival shall not linger on the splintering wood

Not on chattering prayers or on the falling stars

The storm cleared away, the sea quelled

Quenched by the lives of men that its waters have held

The sun had arose and farewell it said to the nightfall

The ninth wave has started it

And in its wake, has ended it all