S.S. Orizaba 27.04.32
1.
You don’t jump, but dive
In clean, aspiring arc
Hands cupped
To receive the waves
Lips parted
To blow the buffets down
Shining in salt mirrors
Like an imaged child
Who’d swim forever
Gilled, inviolate
2.
All surface engines stop
While lifeboats tend
The closing circle
And survivors drag
Prim nets to trap
Lost sailor cries of love
3.
No one above can breathe
A sea-watered poem
Of motherless peace
Or glimpse again
The drowning, plangent soul
This poem “Second Poem for Hart Crane” originally appeared in Indigenous Focus. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 215 (Winter 2012): 119.
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