Tuesday, May 25, 2010

The Unfurled Sail; draft

The sun the morning
and the ship set to its moorings.
Many men, strong, smiling,
ragged, tanned beautiful blackened
men lifting the chain,
the blood red,
rust dead chain dripping
incandescent. Pulled
from the rock bottom of the bay,
a rock bottom worn smooth
and in a slushy
dizzying poof as a cloud the sand
expands, contracts, and sprays the sunlight,
then floats and distracts
the fish swimming, the fish who had,
until the anchor lifted up, top light, dragged across,
a ragged dance, been supping the blood red
chain, dead but until then to the fish.

These curious fish could not count the
nutrition facts of the great iron chain
but instead the taste, so unlike their regular diet
of scuttering crustaceans
and babes of the placid sea; so unlike
but the fish, unknowing even to themselves,
ignorant of the platypus,
suckled the dead, blood red rusted iron chain
and shackled anchor until its dance,
until the blackened tan smiling out of men,
ragged, pulled tugged
the chain, and set the ship adrift.

The sun, now rising,
raining down constant flash
of sunlight, sunshine
around and almost
through the precipitous clouds,
not the puffed
sandy underwater dance of clouds upon
the rock bottom but instead a
cloud built up from the dust
and love of lives past,
now desiccated and dried,
now mixed and slurried
into the earth’s great
salad bowl; of broccoli, of carrots,
sprouts, and togetherness of material things.

A call comes out across the bow,
anchor now on board,
great chain rust puddles dripping through
floor boards; the call a call to
now set sails to unfurl the
flourish of canvas to readjust ropes
to climb to the lookout and the
subsequent snapping of the sails.
The great boat, lurches and bobbles,
as a stout cork upon a
wine bottle ocean, the sails filling with wind
and yet empty they be, pale white,
as ghosts, but bright in the day’s sunshine.

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