When the Queen Frederica reached New York,
we were at Breakfast in the Salon.
The floor was clear of last night’s
food debris and china shards, and
the deck planks were scrubbed raw
so, their bleached wood fibers stood attentively tall.
The tables had been freed of the coiling ropes
that had kept them from careening into the Salon’s walls.
Disinfectant and stomach smells
floated past the spectral glints
hanging dully off the chandeliers.
All was ready for arrival.
Someone popped in his head and called:
You’ll miss the statue!
Another, apparently having passed by before,
Don’t worry. There’s time.
I would have understood,
We’ve arrived, and would’ve run
to be present and waiting
at this rare meeting of archetypal Forms.
On deck, we stood mesmerized
while thousands of squares
set into concrete vertical slabs
floated past rigid and lifeless
which only now I know testified
to Protestant Will—canyon sides
of compressed and structured sand
and no color anywhere.
And in the distance behind,
in the haze we’d just passed through,
gray as if in a cocoon a figure stood
holding something over its head.
-Published In the Tipton Poetry Journal Winter-Spring Issue 2013
