shoninnew found land
Whiteness enough off that coast to last a summer,
with chunks sized to drift among swells
like lost boats rising bottoms up to glimmer,
then dropping from a coastal watcher's view
halfway from here to wherever it is sky
comes down to touch water, blue on blue,
or even larger continents of white
shot through with green, shouldering breakers
with unhurried calm, things for night
to break on, or even day. You and I,
not having seen such before, go out
to frame each other with one in a camera's eye
and watch a schooner nosing among bays
scalloped along fringes of the beast.
The little ship goes near, but turns away
over and over to run, a cur who knows how strong
the behemoth it harries, how final its mere touch.
The white rock nothing notes, but wades along,
a mindless thing, and yet it knows command: we
think of the Titanic, sleeping in her mud --
having discharged frail cargo on the sea.
-- shonin #poetry #newfoundland #icebergs #Titanic
michael
earthling
henkopix
CBC Newfoundland & Labrador
Public Domain Image Archive
