7 Days on the Sea

Monday

    The world is a ball of water.

    See, it is round-sided.

    I move across its topside,

    upon the world, not in it.

    The boat is a comb, acomb over idle

    white hair.

    Waves grow on a round skull

    uncountable.

    Sea, it is round-sided.

    Fog is building a vessel.

    Sea is the butt of a bottle.

    Boat bobs in the center.

    At the V

    of the stern standing,

    I see below me sea,

    ceiling of fog, see

    the round horizon, sea

    tears on my cheeks. I see

    through globes of tears

    the last lost point of land.

    The world all

    of water below and a low

    sky. The world is a ball

    of water. Pendulum-sun

    goes over slow.

    All night out riding

    beside the mast

    the moon posts in the sky.

Tuesday

    Aggressor prow. Agree-er sea.

    In floes of marble vanish veins of foam

    all morning. In the afternoon

    the quarry-ocean starboard hisses, lashes into cracks.

    Concussive blocks slip roaring aft.

    A double thunder smacks the boat's drum-side.

    Steep tents of wind and spray are pitched

    on buckling, heckling water.

    Papoosed under blankets, prammed in a yellow chair

    on a grid of calked wide planks

    that rush in long perspective to the rail,

    I see a corner of the deck rise up

    to roof over angled waves, and duck,

    a hatch-lid closing below my eyelid's thatch.

    Ramping, the paving sea romps, lifts, lets itself down,

    rises, ramps and, romping, side-slips, lets itself down,

    a floor that never stills and flats,

    that never levels steady.

    We dine behind steel ribs: a riveted whale,

    white-bellied, bluntly breaks through acres of quartz,

    bores a corridor with wedged head

    in heavy, innocent, black, abundant water.

    Portholes, gill-holes, jug-shaped, fill with sky

    the purple whale-sheen drains away

    fill with foam and freeze-greendrains away

    fill with liquid sky, with solid sea, that drains away.

    Oh, will it ever pause at half and half

    so the soup can stop, can stop being sly in the bowls?

Wednesday

    A slag-pile slipping, parting, shifting

    black under ashes of cloud.

    Smoke or snow blows off the square, the axe-blade waves:

    A Nova Scotian color, the morning cold and April.

    By noon blue tables with plentiful plates of foam.

    Crisp napery of gulls unfolds aloft.

    The wild side's portside after dark.

    Ghost hogans rise on a plane of coal

    in the mica of moonlight.

    Houris, eeries, valkyries, furies,

    sybils, satyrs, weirds and bards

    orate, whistle, screech, scratch, scrabble,

    snarl, quarrel, quibble in the rigging.

    Trolls, trout, ghouls, geese and gargling walri

    snort, sneer, chortle, sniggle, chuckle in the scuppers.

    I stand at the rail of a wooden pen

    all alone on the windy, dark, warped, harpy sea.

    he moon gashing a cloud, slants up, slants down.

    The moon is posting tonight.

Thursday

    Today, on the round horizon, rain in the east,

    opposite a great gold sheepshead cloud.

    I, in the portside lee of the fantale, found

    the ladder of seven colors upsloped on the sea,

    delicate-ribbed, quite short, a belt to the sky,

    low-linking milky waves to a gray-scud dome:

    Violet, Green, Yellow, Rose, and pallors in between.

    All round, all large and round, the plattered sea.

    All curved, all low and curved, the lid of light.

    The white duck of the boat an only lump on the sea.

    I, there, could not see me,

    but who stared from the stair of the rainbow could see.

    Tonight I lie on a shelf, the cabin dark,

    the bunk floats in the purring ship on the panting sea.

    I-Eye open, level with the porthole, see

    in miniature, round-framed, captured, the round sea:

    like a rushing sky of blue-black foaming clouds

    racing counter to the boator like engines of infinity

    pulsing a summer heaven full-speed by.

    Or the hole is a planet turning, star-spray dashed

    before its face as it travels the orbit's rail.

    Or that white scud is its restless atmosphere.

    Or it is a moon whose white volcanoes steam

    such fluvia across its somber carapace.

    The ship leans slippery sideways. My cradle rocks.

    A rough wide white lash rears up, smacking the glass.

    Atomic, bombastic water blasts, obliterates

    the porthole's iris. The cabin quakes.

Friday

    Eye out running

    on soft flints

    on the pathless sea.

    White-lipped near-stones

    now ganged close to the boat.

    A circular pasture

    raked and cleared today

    of wraths and rips,

    snowy jags and cones.

    I on the quarter deck

    in-rolled in my chair,

    infant or invalid set to cure

    or spoil in the sun,

    I run behind my outrunning eye

    to toe every wave

    that skips to the thin horizon,

    every colt-blue wave

    and its cobalt shadow . . .

    Orange anchor-sun

    steadies my chair.

    Deck builds a foothill,

    sea a gulf, and stern,

    a great hip, leaps

    on wind-free air.

    I look for, what do I look for on the unfurnished sea?

    On land I longed for a large place empty.

    Eye-I avoided obstacles, vehicles, people, shapes intercepted.

    Eye-I wished to veer out far, long, wide, high, unframed, uninterrupted

    but like a thrown stone bumped, stopped, stumbled into buildings.

    Now no upright, only the permanent low-fleeing waves

    the sparse and insubstantial, transient clouds . . .

    Which white loller afar might be a boat?

    Or porpoise, or even a swimming man

    naked, living on wave as gull on air?

    Which dark dollop might be nose of a whale?

    Or wooden joist from a down-gone ship?

    Or even a seated man, ebony, shining

    Sea-Buddha, rigid, afloat, with ivory grin? . . .

    Only the waves perpetual, only the unpeopled sea.

Saturday

    There on the round rim east,

    on the compass curve,

    the ship the sextant's center,

    there on the lead-thin line

    I see a mark!

    Growing square, approaching.

    A hut? Oh, it is a boat,

    a twin-ship sailing to meeting.

    Trundling, tossing, tipping,

    persisting, coming on.

    Expanding, rounding tubbish,

    towing a wide wake.

    Cross-barred masts for and aft

    stab her solid to the sea.

    Yellow and green, her plump

    stack issues energy.

    Our sister passes, she

    is our mirror on the wave.

    How like a painted boot

    (with doll-arms waving from decks!)

    In full-hooped splashing skirts

    she bobs on, opposite bound.

    We wave all our arms.

    Our toot salutes her toot.

    So soon she littles and fades,

    graying to a hut

    of mist in the shape of a square.

    And sharpens to a mark

    on the empty map of the west.

    And teeters on the edge

    of horizon, and rolls off. . .

    a period fallen from the font.

Sunday

    Land. Yes, Ho! A mist-made coast,

    a strand of Ireland sighted off the bow.

    Fast Net Rock, admonitory tower,

    the lighthouse rising dour on a fist of stone:

    Cobh comes forward quiescent to greet

    the float of the boat.

    How mat-mild now the tantrum sea

    lured to the cove.

    How flat and old the world,

    and odd and still,

    when upcropped the horizon halts

    the willful eye,

    shows it its stall and pasture

    safe and small.

    All sibilant little laps the boat glides on,

    its lunge arrested.

    A great heart has stopped.

    A silent sled is whitely, mournfully borne

    to the gray land's shed.

    I, in the prow, here, hear my pulse again,

    feel equal feet on the steady deck.

    Fence of the rail nears fence of the dock.

    The door to the wild is closing.

    With hanging neck

    I watch that crack far down

    the world around

    and world not round

    through sliding tears.