Night Sail
I dreamt of sailing Spray, grandfather Herrick’s
pilot cutter, from its berth in an old black-and-white
on the kitchen wall, past the docks, the cranes and derricks,
not to some sluggish oil-rainbowed bight
with pier and prom, in the lee of Gosport or Goring,
not to the wild side of the Isle of Wight
or even a Winslow Homer Nassau mooring
but a secluded cove, where we’d ride at gentle anchor. . .
When I woke, you were still snoring
your smoker’s snore; I saw the cliff-face of a super-tanker
and, tied up to starboard, someone’s super-yacht,
flying the flag of Panama, or Casablanca —
this was before the crash, not
that the crash would have bothered him —
motionless behind its oil-rich haze, its hot
sides gleaming and all its tackle trim;
a super-model, fresh from her shoot on the Ile Ste. Marguerite,
her neat mound cupped in a scrap of scrim,
supine on a sun-deck, inviting him eat —
A drink first maybe? You choose. . .
The air pulsed with the steady thresh and thrum, the beat
of her super-engines, super-screws,
and suddenly someone had drawn a veil, a pall
of grape-dark clouds over the plaque for La Pérouse.
~~~~
Storm-light on the marina, the harbour-wall,