Skipper's Tale

Photo by Nicolas J Leclercq

There are bare winter days when the sea is kin
to mountain country, crouching in a gray-feathered hide,
a brief minute blue, then long hours with waves like pale
lynxes pawing in vain at the shore gravel.

On days like this, shipwrecks rise from the deep in search
of their owners lost in the noise of the city, and drowned
crews drift landward, thin as pipe smoke.

(The real lynxes are up north, with sharp claws
and dreamy eyes. Up north where daylight
lives in a mine both day and night.

Where the sole survivor sits
by the Arctic lights and listens
to the music of those frozen to death.)

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