Standing on the fantail of a warship on patrol,
Its wake stretching off to from where I’d come,
Transporting me back to my first day aboard,
Three long deployments ago.
I’d learned about things like a bucket of steam,
A sky hook, and a left-handed marlinspike.
When sent below to fetch a fireman’s punch,
I came back with both shoulders bruised.
Now, beneath this cold Comanche moon,
I find calm in the grace of self-reflection,
And remember certain bitter confrontations,
Where the only honest words were angry ones.
I sincerely regret all my barbarous cruelties,
But I make no apologies for being a survivor,
While taking the heat on the South China Sea,
Waiting for World War Whatever.
MERCILESS CITY
Grimy city blocks worn and cold are lost
In rusted steel and roots of permafrost.
Faintly emerging from the gloom hazily misted,
The crane’s spire is a ship’s mast listed
In an ice-fog off Baffin’s distant northwest coast -
A crooked sky-hook reduced to ghost.
Barely seen, swirling in an icy grimace,
A patch of whiter fog hides the sun’s bright face.
The distant cars disappear and are lost without pity,
Trying to escape the cold shoulder of the city.
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Written today on a January morning in St. Petersburg,Russia.
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