the ship's captain
The ship’s captain is never out of earshot
of the cries and calls of his crew
as their ship sails out under a triangular moon
on a sea whose purple is the color
of interiors of orchids
and the fluctuating light from near and
distant stars is their navigational tool
as constellations map out their route
through mythic sky onto shores of
musk and ivory
Their tiny boat is held in watery embrace
listening intently to the oceanic heart below
and the ship’s churning heart below deck and their
own hearts whose valves are now
echo chambers of a command given at the
earth’s inception when shadow and light
divided and sun and moon swam to their
respective orbits
and dragons seas boiled with their
incendiary breath
The captain hears all this from
time immemorial to the time when
time is no longer
and the crew’s eyes become stars for
guidance in their own right
and raw sons grow to be
groves of redwood trees gazing seaward
but never leaving their watery roots
and the sailors’ faces look moonward
through an eternity of gently rippling waters
in a dimensionless deep space of endlessly
compassionate calm
7/5/2008
(from Sparks Off the Main Strike, in progress) |
For
me the province of poetry is a private ecstasy made public, and
the social role of the poet is to display moments of shared universal
epiphanies capable of healing our sense of mortal estrangement—from
ourselves, from each other, from our source, from our destiny, from
The Divine.
