“The world is hungry, even the wind is biting” –Josh Ritter
Vessel
Scraping at the bottom
Feet crossed and legs lengthened
Under my weight is the curve
The curving steel and brass and bones
I am carving for a way out
Held down under the ship
under the ocean
Hovering right above where the earth begins
____________________
Oscillating and tripling out underneath
The way of the waves
I can follow through
I can’t find where to meet you
or where to turn to
One on top of the other – it keeps
happening, one on top of the other
one on top of the other
____________________
Where is this place?
(I think it is home)
crossing through
one against two
again and again
one against two
the next/ the next/ the next
____________________
Changing places
around me
everything falls to the right
everything falls to the left
The LAND is 3,999 feet high
(How will I get there?)
I am down below on this ship my grandfather built
The beginning is the ending to what you are giving me
(What are you giving me?)
____________________
In togetherness there is nothingness
____________________
Lines and space and curves and eights and nines and tens
Where one wave doesn’t line up with the next
Where the rhythms are off and struggle to circle back round
The rhythm pulls back and finishes the tarnish on the steel
rimmed
trim
of the boat
We are ALL on this boat
NOT just you, NOT just me
ALL of us
WHOLE body
Our feel tied to its mass as it sinks:
Get out of my hands
Get out of my hair
Get our of my back
I keep going/ keep going/ keep going
____________________
Not all at the same time
Circling for air…
Slowly moving down and looking up
to the edge of the cliff
where I sink, where I try to climb
from the water to the land
asking myself to be
crossed over or crossed under
or crossed off
gone forever…
