Tattoo

All the beautiful young men,
Muscles etched with birds and names
That would be long-forgotten

Without the ink. How could they
Fall so quickly into love
Then out again, as if the heart

Knew one thing on dry land, at sea
Another, under the pillared sky
With foam leaping over the deck? Emotion

So fleeting it can turn into
Its own undoing feels itself
Rewriting the whole body

For good. The sailor I once knew
Was faithful to a fault, true as a wave,
True as a spit of snow under moving shade.