POETRY

Whaler

On a visit to a museum and re-reading a classic

Nantucket Whaling Museum | Medium format film image by author

Imagine a sailor who cannot swim
make him

expendable

a dime a dozen
among a motley crew of cousins
and ship him out to battle monsters

Send him to

nest

with the crows
and to bear down upon leviathan
with little more than his wits

bare
feet

and a few splinters of wood
to defend him

then watch

as he silently meets his fate

s
o
u
n
d
i
n
g

irrevocably into the frigid deep

So, it’s really irritating how restrictive Medium is with formatting poetry. (Ahem, if y’all are listening, it would be nice to have a little more creative leeway).

But I digress. This summer I started reading Moby Dick again in preparation for my trip to Nantucket…