Boat

Miscalculation the day's first high

from the last moon gulf Hades dark:

at 3 a. m. shrimp boat run aground

and engine grinding who else awake:

window so silver it seemed not light

nor any natural element:

again and again a throttling up

spewing water propeller scoring

the mud until tide lifted the keel:

one might have thought it was the engine—

however it was the hull began

to move offshore the window blackened

I stood until all throbbing sound

was blotted out absorbed by the dark

interstellar caves near the horizon

turned to clouds in the stir of morning::

low tide revealed the diagonal

across a glassy flat mimic of

a comet tail following greater light-:

heaven and hell have no memory

nor message nor direction beyond

this human mark fast disappearing.

Copyright © 2005 Carol Frost All rights reserved
from 32 Poems
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission