Startled from sleep at the moorings,
the vessel coughs then grumbles
a steady invective. The near world
spills from the funnels as we wait
in the dawn's miasma and idly count
the pylons where little benign buddhas
perch on slender yellow stems.
Somehow it's comforting, this misconception
of perceiving, which we pull like a blanket
around us. Somehow it enables us to ignore
the things that lie on the mud a mere fathom
beneath our feet—imagination's sinewy eels,
ever vigilant within the sunken naves
of yesterday's catch, or the horseshoe crabs
trotting on their spider legs, fiercely
helmeted for evolution's long campaign.
We'd rather forget such unsightliness of perfection
and the way life spirals forth, feeding
on whatever it finds. And so when the boat
finally begins to plow the vast field
of our inheritance, the small islands
along the harbor channel emerge like events
in a promising career. Too soon they gather behind
in the dwindling amalgam of memory, as we push
with throttle fully open beyond the jetty
and the last buoy's solemn bell.