Life on a Killer Submarine by Jimmy Carter

Life on a Killer Submarine

by President Jimmy Carter

(published in North Dakota Quarterly, 60:1, 1992)

I had a warm, sequestered feeling

deep beneath the sea,

moving silently, assessing

what we heard from far away

because we ran so quietly ourselves,

walking always in our stocking feet.

We'd often hear the wild sea sounds.

the scratch of shrimp, the bowhead's moan,

the tantalizing songs of humpback whales.

We strained to hear all other things

letting ocean lenses bring to us

the pulse of scr...