Heart Break

Sometimes the break of heart is not like glass,
it silts like rivers, shifting great ports far inland
maroons the quays of Ostia and Rye, depletes
their granaries, slower than candle-burn,
shape-shifts the landscape, hills the river-bed
dries up the fisheries. Sand trickles through
the neck of hour-glass, filling lungs
and throat until it stops the tongue.
But note the start, the hair-line fracture
weak point, dating to that time, this hour;
first grains of sand which start to dam the tide.