On some northern, coastal bay
there is fallen dock
it does not have a name
or appear on any map
save for one
sitting in a bygone gas station
collapsed along a stretch of route 6
This dock, without name,
is often seen
as bundled driftwood
favored neither by the 'gulls nor crane
It is even lazily avoided by fish,
swept by in their eternal procession
toward the sea
It seems as though dock's descent
was a gradual but certain thing
like the bathing of stiff, aged limbs,
perhaps drawn down
by calloused barnacles
grown too thick
But would that this nameless drift
could speak,
it may recount the weight of bearing
some life aloft to cast forth
with the knowledge that
it may not return to shore.