for my great, great grandmother
The knobble-spine ocean
vertebrae articulating
beast beneath, that hungers
for ships like this
to tear timbers
between submarine teeth
till it digests
keel, hold, deck, bulwarks
sodden sails, that fall
from wind-strummed heights
but keening dissonance
is not hungering sea
stench not briny depths
but below-deck humanity
we might have preferred
sea-death to this decay:
red-welted skin
malaise, fevered words
the hacking cough, that cuts
through
takes life and jettisons
overboard in shrouds
as miles, like flotsam
accumulate on a mottled sea
that springs
and falls shoreward
still among the dying
on tented beaches
we the living are cleared
to sail and scatter from Hobsons Bay
alive in a new land.