THE FIRST AND ONLY SAILING

Your shores diminish.

You learn

the doom of sailors drifting

south on ice islands.

What echoes shall you code

to float the sea?

When Manolete

got it from Islero in Linares,

he rose again as four

stone matadors in Córdoba.

Likewise Philippe-Auguste,

who paid his bodyguards with whores

to keep them loyal.

This side

of memory, you fight the killing

tides to death for etchings

on a rock, for life.

As for

The Happy Isles?

Let dreamers

dock there.

Believe in such,

and you’ll believe that Essex,

More, and Mary of Scotland

kidded the chopper on their climb

to God.

Settle for the whirlpool

and the cliff.

Mermaidens, naked

at the nipples and below, still

mate with sailors in their sleep.

And who escapes from sleep?

Waken, and you wage one ship

against the aces of the sea.

Weaken, and the bait of Faust’s bad

wager waits you.

Worsen,

and the winds of old indulgence

overtake you.

You face them

as you’d face, years afterward,

a girl you’d kissed and fondled

in a park but never married.

Becalmed, you make your peace

with dreams.

Expect nothing,

and anything seems everything.

Expect everything and anything

seems nothing…

To live

you leave your yesterselves

to drown without a funeral.

You chart a trek where no

one’s sailed before.

You rig.

You anchor up.

You sail.

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