What the Mothers Do While the Boats Drift and the Men Cast and Pull
“Have you any news of
my boy Jack?”
Rudyard Kipling
On waiting for the news— all the grit and sip of liquid dignity,
anything for the bearing
up.
up.
And what but the draw and bulge of such
bellows as lungs
their once was confidence as much on the sail as
on the wrap ‘round
the mast when sails weren’t anymore
necessary, their right tight fold and knot loose when this wind,
necessary, their right tight fold and knot loose when this wind,
this rouge-cheeked, rogue wind
billowed any, all, full cloth from pole
to hold.
Best stay calm but how to know? (though when
is
never
in
the crow’s
nest)
We’re our own captain in this wind by Jesus. And our
list, our tip and groan, our grip
of the rope wound round and through is what
cousins us
when it grows full length across the beam, as
some medieval
liturgy of a Good Friday three in the afternoon
rent,
what wind, what shoals,
what open water, what scraped, broke open keel,
the feel (and the tongue’s
her
only
muscled compass
and
others sooth : what, dear
and who)
Oh lung for a lung. Oh, wind or doldrum, to turn her wait into a way
when each,
what they’ll speak, when they find her daughter
on bottom, what they speak will
puncture her ever every, never to come again to
a breath of ease.
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