They breathed in the still light

  of a quiet dawn

  emerging from

  the storm-tossed seas

  beneath the retreating darkness,

  Their wounds a telling

  and retelling of victories

  and deep and bitter loss.

  Yesterday is a lie,

  the past a deceiver,

  twisted by memories,

  then stretched out

  into a grey fog,

  betraying truth

  with the advance of time.

  But something gleamed hard

  in those eyes -

  those gnawed and harrowed arches,

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  that vanishing, flame-eaten span,

  the pain that did not vanish

  with the night.

  They know this sea,

  the dying place,

  the verge of new beginnings

  the phoenix shore,

  the resurrection strand,

  The eastern sea

  where yesterday dies

  and tomorrow is born.

  The past was slain

  with the sunrise,

  blood red

  spilling across the sky

  ere it is scorched

  by the golden dawn.

  They linger awhile,

  looking out over the

  restless waves,

  the ebb and flow of fate,

  seeing, perhaps, their sins

  being burned away

  by the rising sun.

  They will come back here

  one day,

  beneath another dawn,

  to fall in silence

  unknown,

  and perhaps unmourned,

  yet glorious,

  to be purified

  by morning's light

  once more,

  and die in peace

  on that quiet shore

  of an ocean

  they refused to name