friends of the court, friars minorite, agents provocateurs,

bird-spangled shamans, fainting oracles, screeching owls,

wise men of Gotham, and women who run with wolves

all blessed by the blue hand of a reckless dancer

who spares a thought or two for the world but no more

as she poses, heels in the air, Cossack-kicking on a crumbling reef.

Seven Islands

sand-wrought storm-humped

these islands

never complain

they take what comes

craft

one name for seven

from dropped iron lost rivers and

spits of reclaimed land starved

ocean

wind-ripped light-riveted

gravel-spun overrun

roads that take you step by step

to where the water is

sweet and deep

the only way up

until help arrives

is south

Ocean

my name is Ocean

I shall not be contained

my tides spell

starting gun and finish line

afterwards only shells

and scattered roofs

will remind you I was

there

my combers wash away the roots of trees, towns, the shaken heart

but mortals there’s hope

my breakers hurl seeds back at your shores

after the flood the chroniclers will write

in Konkani, Sabir, Aymara, Tulu, Jarawa, Krio, Tok Pisin:

after the flood the beach exploded with giant peacock trees

in whose branches on windy days you could hear

the surge

and swell

of Ocean summoning whales, whalers who chased blood-wakes,

red-haired women who fought pirates, sleepless harpooners

who sailed from fjordlands to where

volcanoes splintered the sleeping ice,

furies who choked pearl divers, drove catamarans aground,

voyagers who fell into the sea and grew wings

Ocean reciting from his depths

every drifting epic of pursuit, every song of shipwreck,

every trace of raft and sail and trailing anchor

flotsam jetsam buckram vellum

he could remember

Ahab

Captain of castaways, the pilot calls out and his curse carries

across docks, derricks, opium factories:

a typhoon in the horse latitudes.

He’s hurled his ship after the whale

that swallowed him and spat him out.

The monster is the only system he’s known.

At the bridge, he’s drenched in the dark:

locked on target, silent, furrowed,

Saturned to stone.

*

Across steep tides, through walls of water, his life has always been pursuit.

As the ship splinters on the reef,

the rigging becomes his noose.

Brine blistering his throat, he thinks:

If only I’d harpooned this monster on a page.

Spelling the Tide

We drew near the island, the surf a cannonade on its stony beaches,

no landing.

We dropped anchor.

Some fishermen came down

to the water’s edge and called out. We called back.

The surf roared in our ears, no one

heard no one.

The skirling wind shredded our voices and danced on them.

We pointed

at the canoes

they’d hauled out of tide’s reach.

Come get us.

They didn’t get us

or didn’t want to.

We made signs.

The skirling wind shredded our signs and danced on them.

They melted away in the rain.

Water in your sails, shirts, socks is wet lead.