Inspired by Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.

Below me hang the waves in their array,

swung in ceaseless cresting, cupping

to my desperate breath those souls

who trust themselves to the curling wood.

I feel the breaking in my boots,

hear the gull calls crazing the Sun’s face.

On every hand the eyeless dead

thrust into the green brine of their grave.

I see them streaming into deeper darks,

oozing down the crush of mountain slopes

to let the angel kraken cut

dead letters from their brows 

as the shadows of the restless ships,

oared on to newborn stars by withered men,

flicker out against our world’s undying night.

Their patience breaks against me,

braids our fearing and our madcap courage 

as the palm whispers and the coral spreads

and time steams into our fleet

assuring us a world without us comes.