Midocean Devotions (Jan. 1, 2005)

I have sailed so many days now
in this leaky, singular craft
I have grown inured of any shore
too sweet or sudden or
too sodden with your waves.
Only here in salt betweens
do I trust my words to your larynx
enough to call these verses singing,
my naked will astride the
dolphin mare whose
hooves have breached all seas.
Likewise this sure rudder
has no employ on dry land
a plow for turning fallow turf,
harnessed like a beast of burden
to fallow, sering days -- No, give
me blue fundament to heaven’s knees,
brine poured to hell’s sour lees;
give me fins and flukes the size
of sex swimming further down
a white whale godly
in its ungodly smash
of craft not oared with fire.
Whatever may transpire out here,
only the sea may fully speak
in that Latin of the deep
whose gospel glows in dragon
miniscule, three miles down
from where the world sleeps.
This far out, no one can
hear me scream to you,
except for God and Moby
and the song. Such concord
I pour like cream over my
morning flakes; each day
I write this wicked book
on pages white as snow,
the ink as blameless as the hand
you or God or Moby
bid me once again to row.