By longing for water but having to read it

Scored this afternoon from the Harvard Book Store: Sean O'Brien's HMS Glasshouse (1991), his third collection. It's the first I've read; it's great. He is a good poet of water. I am looking forward so much to The Drowned Book (2007) once I can get hold of it.

Occasionally we will think and see that goings-on may be frayed

I slept another eight hours. I begin to think the world may still be ending after all.

And I dreamed urban fantasy, except that it was taking place in the salt marshes of New England: retrieving an oar from a man who lived alone in a surprisingly well-kept house with nothing but curlews and cordgrass for miles. It wasn't much to look at, short and splintery; it had power over ghosts and a probably fictitious association with Odysseus (the only man to sail to the gates of Hades and return again, his crew all lost, reclaimed by those dark shores), and his refusal to lend it to me even under orders mystified me until I realized he was a ghost himself, hiding out from whatever he should have gone on to. I am afraid I threatened him into it. By the time I got to Brig o' Dread in the "Lyke-Wake Dirge," the air was full of half-seen foxfire in the twilight and he'd have given me his fingernails if that would have sent off whatever lovers or creditors he recognized in those desolate lanterns; but then he was too frightened to let the oar out of his sight, so I had to take him with me when I left. And facing a road trip with a cranky, chattery, insecure dead man, it became evident to me that this dream was meant for either strange_selkie or teenybuffalo and I woke up.

Tune in tomorrow night . . . ?