Shade of the Well-Wound Shell

Free to ride off on this fish
Of dusk tints through the dark waves,

The books will rest next to bones
And set their type next to them

On the floors of the warm seas
We will leave, the notes as well,

And the sums, too. All at rest,
Once they were free to have left,

Just the dimmed, grey and blue hues
Of their well-wound shells still here.

The words by then will have fledged,
Learned to fly, feed on their own,

Hard things, lives lived out of flesh.
Thoughts will need no shells, no breath.