At Last
What little I know
of the way of the world
--scarce anything.
Kathleen Jamie
“The Garden”
I think maybe the sea is the utmost Buddhist
of us all. I sit this because maybe she
is big enough for it, completely, big enough
to do every bit of giving up and finishing
it. Big enough to let everything float
over the top of her roiling rolling, reflecting
the face of the sky in her, the skin
of the tales and fins in her, the slick of the spills
afloat on her and in her, surfs and drips
dropping going to foam, whiskers slicked thick
up to the lip of the rocks a long way in
to shore and by the time they arrive they’ve been
everywhere and in everything:
human feet and gannet
tail, whale birth
and broke open ship’s
hold. Snow. They’ve been
snow, and lightning
and once a star’d come
and another time just
(and only because I want it
to be) the last crack/cry
of the last egg
crushed under
the poacher’s foot.
It dripped itself into
the watery salt and the two
dead now and in the boat
last great auks, heads slung
across the gunwales and some
of the chum some of it
drifted and a bit, just
before push-off, yoke
on one of the men’s boots
almost soundless
in the slosh at the bottom
of the boat, near the stern
near the open bung
blending with the blood
of all their other plunder
But the sea. The sea swallows
and its all gone all of it and only
how much suffering later?
Those foam mustaches? Those bubbles
coming up to shore to wait
to break open on the dried Irish
Moss: a moment, a moment.
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