Sound View

         Like driftwood,
antlered,
         a deer
foams toward shore.

         The size of the hull
determines the drag,
         and the living mast
displaces the air,

         storms its greasy shingles
from sea nettle,
         snorts the salt
from its black fist

         of a snout.
A container ship
         menaces the horizon
with its calculus

         of cubic feet and knots.
Meditation point,
         the tanker resists
my efforts at composure.

         When I close my eyes
the bright boxes
         mother explosives
the way the pastoral

         turns elegy,
transfiguring the bodies in its path.

Robin Becker
Domain of Perfect Affection
University of Pittsburgh Press

Copyright © 2006 Robin Becker.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

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