Rain

Most of his life is gone, spent far from land
and bed and comfort. Cold rain spills upon
the lashes of his eyes. All waters run.
The sea drags from the sea its equal self.

The not-yet-born carry charts within
their liquid minds. It takes a year to build
a caravel; just an hour to bring it
down. The sky is a dark sea and churning.

The lombards and the muskets fill with water.
Everything is flooding: the portholes and
the buckets, the binnacle, the swollen clouds.
Thick fog blunts the sky; the mainsail sags.

On the surface of the wind, the tallest waves
totter and drown. The whole world is brimming.
And while the hull leaks like a wicker basket,
and his legs are sunk in rainwater to the knees,

he hears beneath the rolling of his ship
a gentler surge - the exhalation and pulse
of memory, the waters from which he once
emerged: head first and dreaming, like a seed.

Barbara Helfgott Hyett