Ship

From yesterday’s random words.
Painting

Ship

The ship heads north,
course fixed, the wheel lashed,
and wind bites sharp
as the cracking ice.
No one will reach home.

In heavy seas, the bell rings,
below, the radio crackles,
smoke streams
in the uncertain verticality
of a wild ocean.

Nowhere under the sun is safe,
but when there is only water
underfoot, fear swims in every gut,
a shoal of mackerel,
or the white teeth of sharks.
We reach for amulets.

They throng the quay,
waiting, hoping, beneath a black sky
and the white of gulls screaming.
Storm cloud scrapes roofs,
wave crests. A bell tolls.

Night deepens with no stars,
flying cloud, and rain driving arrow-flights.
The crowd grows, leaning inward on itself.
Too far away to hear,
a ship’s bell answers.