after Stephen Spender

Main engine’s powerful black exhaust,
          the heart clutches in, recoiling pistons,
                       hard rudder a starboard.
                            The last line cast
                                  free of the dock.

                            A white wake, as a wedding gown
                       unfurls astern, stretching over the harbor;
          mothers wave farewell from the pier.
Gathering speed, she makes way,

nodding yes into the wind...

                                   Breaching the first swell of open ocean,
                       she beams with luminous self-possession.
          Her gantries begin to sing, first low,
then choiring in ninety-knot wind.
          She moves wrapped in myth, embracing
                       comets and rainbows with her bow —

                           Heading true,

                                latitudes pass, meridians reel, and the celestial
                           pricks the eye with new bearings, new
                       measurements for time: asleep by noon,
          we pare our nails at five — steaming over
the broad back of the sea,
          we sound for presence of land.
                       Eyes go deep into strange curlings
                          under the trough,
                                sea-lion sober,
                                      brazen in the sea-air.

E. M. Test lives in California. His most recent collection, Fata Morgana, is forthcoming in a bilingual edition from Ediciones El Tucán de Virginia. He writes about his experiences on the high seas where he spent thirteen years as a mate aboard fishing vessels.

©Copyright of this poem remains with the poet: please do not download or republish without permission.

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