But when jellyfish don't pulse,
and hatsize crabs won't wave
a feeler, points to bad. To dead.
No corpse-reek, but I uneasily climb,
check deeper pools. Asleep the same.

Through a notch. Bizarre! The crags behind
the cove, hulking over the high-tide line,
are but a screen; beyond's a dizzy drop.
On three sides, we're on a mountaintop!

Red canyons pale to haze. Only back
through stonechoked cleft, is this sea
impossibly abrim. The peak's a gate
between worlds wet and dry--one
ocean withered gone; one deadly high.

Someday a surge from perfect storm
Will dash the gash, clear cleft, become
salt waterfall. And just how far
can interworld catastrophe then run?
A Caspian aflood or even Noah there;
An ebb forever, here. Only limits are
the ocean's size and portal's flow:
unknown. And cannot know.

Two desert hikers warn me "Don't rock
the boulders." But I do, too far, as some
perverse inner voice says "They're un-
safe, unstable." So I help a two-ton
red monstrosity over the brink!
Down the flank it arcs, some fifty yards,
to crash on a ledge like a bomb.

So easy to rock; "Would've fallen soon,"
I rationalize--but in a gusting storm
(everyone home, slopes bare, alone)
not today's halcyon, down upon
fairweather climbers. Were any on
that ledge--did I kill someone?

Yet fear fades. I lean the more. Half-ton
boulder topples down. Crags roar again!
Am I trying to breach the portal, heal
A dry world with a fall of brine,
Brim a sunken sea to burgeon rain?

That question--drastic surgeon--
Aborts my dream. It's morning.
I'm uneasy. What did I mean
By clearing impossible pass,
scheming an aorta?
Pinprick, or a vampire drain?
My jetsam dream is warning:

Torn, that portal
may never seal;
the fall never fail.
Torrent immortal.