No Wonder

There was a breath that pushed the ships across the sea

And puffed its cheeks and became their boilers.

But when the wind churned into a storm

And the boats drew in their sails or simmered by piers

There was no one with an eye behind the wind

To take in a fall in a forest of masts,

To see teeth in the clouds clenching with lightning,

To mumble with distant thunder or spy a mime

In the branches of trees swaying at the edge of sight.

It was no wonder for those passing from the real to the

real,

Yet there was so much of the unreal that might have

been saved;

Before the whitecapped wave broke on its own extinction.

It was as if the storm had come at night or not at all

And the log books recorded only the passage and ports.