On a grey day
in the green sea,
under the moon,
the wind howling,
the waves walloping,
enveloped in slime as a newborn,
on the cold wooden floors
of a glossy blue jack boat,
with a thick, white canvas sail –
born alone –
whitecaps rolling and breaking
flurry blistering,
the small boat,
like a model,
rocking,
is blown in all directions...
Trapped lying back,
like a turtle,
knees and elbows wiggle,
suddenly the malleable hand clutches
a near dry piece of bread on the floor
and swats it into dry chewing
swallows –
thirsty...
A hard wave pushing
up and back
the little body flips,
moving on hands and knees toward
a jar of water
at the tip of the hollow bow while
crawling past,
the rough-hewn mast,
a wave hiccups and
the soft shoulder bumps –
like clay it’s remolded,
one up, one down
dragging along, limp
a tumble over...
A fast gust and
a whirling gyration
of a tip,
the too-weak weak, small hands
that tickle when trying
to twist the metal lid
off the jar,
leave the thirst caking
the roof of his mouth desert,
tongue parched.
waves sprinkling
a cool mist
on those tender cheeks.
A heaving swell
billows
the swaying jack
and wheels the balmy tot towards the flat-backed stern.
on his way rolling
he collides again with the mast,
and his workable spine
folds in two:
he is dead.
An awesome tempest
that will come in the morning
has sent scouts,
and with them whispering hums of expected carnage,
that rattle the polished blue clapboards.
The floor had been dry once,
under the moonlight –
on that orphic birth,
the whole floor,
everything but the damp shadow
of primordial ooze
underneath the fretful body, kicking and clawing to flip,
had all been dusty like a shop.
And in some moments,
when this poem wasn’t watching,
the unsubstantial body would run one of the tenuous fingers
from one of its embryonic, plushy hands
across the coarse plywood –
slimmer than a board an amateur martial artist
might brag about breaking,
And he would build, along the wood floor,
little trails of dust, his extremity mindlessly tracking
to create aisles that
ants might march through,
the little walls of the finger’s wake like tan snowbanks.
The gale came and passed, and in the sunny blue morning we found
that the boat had kicked the mangled infant’s body out
into the clear sea.
Cheeks no longer dry like sawdust,
eternally pruned, saturated:
sponge of a boy who spent a dead lifetime
floating through the great storm,
water lapping over his face
with the sort of
pothering, hasty turmoil
that would dilute a breathing man to madness
but had come and
with salt
cleaned his face and body,
with the sort of peace we’d like to find
on shores.
