OFF RHODE ISLAND

Watching a first sailing boat
in the storm as an observer
floating by this wind
stirring up the craggy coast
off Rhode Island
yet trying not to make waves
as the Northeaster's breeze
pulls my legs under
the roundabout boat docks
as if my life is temporarily
hiding on watery hull rocks
twisting in a stymied turn of fate
by trying every push up
to get the most warm
in my red Christmas sweater
embedded with a soccer letter
while watching with a camera
and a boast at a newly sighted
humpbacked whale
I'm anchored by the Coastline
by a shimmering fjord
shivering on the grey waters
annulled by eyesores of time
almost reeling
fearing to be sunk
by the fish's large ghostly tail
as if Melville himself would fulfill
his poetic mission wish in me
not willing to harm
or strike any mammal
with a treasured spear
from my bare trunk
of culled memory
here at the mirrors of high tide
watching an open mouth
of the biggest fish
with my halting camera
off the wide swollen banks
trying to bare my memory
of thanks for my life as a poet
to remember this skulking moment
of furtive pride in late December
wavering for shaking moments
like the prophet Jonah
having to wait for a higher power
to decide my furtive fate
I'm like a lost brigand
with a life and death wish
on a ship of low estate
in the few knots of a ship
not willing to have sinned
while trying to hear the wind
and to tell this allegory
to the local press
of a recurrent religious theory
why it's always an adventure
for a cultured poet's day
of feeling hypnotized
among the boat's sway
of floating in innocent streams
that my high powered fans
will recognize this tale
of the reality of a day dream
on a mat at a once even keel side
of being traumatized
by this documentary drama
enfolding here
of my own mimetic history,
not meant to be swept away
nor bent in kneeling to sway
by the winding shoals of bream
turtles swim by boulder and stones
praying for God's own glory
to rise up on the waves
by spray spume sounds
over our cold dry bones
and to give my own cabin fevered
testimony remembering how
the Old Testament prophet Jonah wept
for his own bold apocalypse
of a scroll's revelation plan
putting aside his kept diary
away from his chapped lips
around the emboldened Leviathan
in which was he was saved from all
the flooding waters,
I resume to tell you of my story
of this day in recreation
that I was not abandoned
nor died as I cried out here
on the perfumed island bounty
of lost trade ships of the nations
by the fishing net cargo
wading in from this home harbor
by five light house stations
though shaken from the flood
yet feeling forsaken
remembering how lamb blood
was sprayed
on the lintels of the wall and door
and saved the desperate slaves
in Moses time
when Pharaoh swore
not to let the Hebrews go
on a saint's pilgrimage
from Mt. Sinai
to the top of the promised land,
that God is able to save us
from our own ill fainted ego
or journey of a protocol utility,
a poet wishes for a ghostly exodus
here off Rhode Island
near the iridescent Elm trees
when the spirited windy breeze
will blow its ghostly howling force
and took a poet literally
in his tense hand
when I sensed a holy presence
who recognized my need for safety
to lead me from the sea coast
when there seemed only futility
for me to unwittingly understand
my newly energized
and fertilized imagination,
hence to land here by Providence.