ODE TO A SCHOONER CROSSING CAPE COD BAY

Silently sluicing the hazy Bay,
Thou, O two-masted sloop,
slip past my envious gaze.
I taste the churning seaspray
leaping o’er thy pitching bow;
feel the billowing breeze ‘cross thy decks
slapping cheeks, wizened and raw, numb;
hear thy joists creak and groan beneath thy
burden of safely returning
thy Now Voyagers home.
Even jaded Time lingers longingly aft
before He trudges onward.
Look! Ahoy! To the West
Safe harbor draws nigh.

My spirit re-alights morosely
in this deck chair, plastic and false.
Oh, to feel the roiling sea
‘neath my pieds, unused as they are to
the putative surface over which men’s
Lilliputian skiffs hurtle!
Take me hence, O Muse, and deposit me
amidst the fellowship of wind and sail.
Remove me from the safe harbor
in which I warily roost.
What good is this tranquil
safety if its price
be thus prosaic benignity?