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.
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poem by May Swenson
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