Know what we’re doing?
Reading stories:
Novels, biography, articles, short stories,
about wonderful or terrible or mean or tender
human beings who drowned
when the ocean liner, skiff, whaler, slaver,
goes down in a
hurricane, smashing on the rocks, exploding in battle.
Ships and all hands sink as we’re revetted,
while the ark we’re sailing takes water slowly,
revets popping, caulking seeping,
the iceberg approaching in the night,
the white whale coming on full bore.

Our fictions, so seductive, we don’t sense collision
or see the ocean leaking onto our cabin floor.

Until,
the damp of our bunks,
the books pages soaked
and none have time to pray.