Deathships

 
 
    
Deathships

      "…A face kissing the water death
      A weary slow sway of a lost hand
      And the sea, the moving sea, the sea
            God is cold."
                  Stephen Crane
                  from Posthumously Published Poems

The water stilled, dark green surfaces
in flat dollar bills, money green, liquid cash
its timeless flow in silence, broken only
by the black knives of sharks – circling.

Bare wooden ships, no ports of call
lonely wooden ships on a barren sea.

Dark night, moonless, shadows pass
not shadows, but holes in starlight
the nether void of despair, wooden plies
laminations of death, layers of dead.

Bare wooden ships, no ports of call
lonely wooden ships on a barren sea.

Black ship, carved of war, enameled in blood
marred with the stab that killed it:
a tail emblazoned in rising sun
the stinking bodies swept in a divine wind.

Bare wooden ships, no ports of call
lonely wooden ships on a barren sea.

Pine grained hull and tire stripes
wavy lines in a continental drift
an aimless tide, fluid procession
a sea of red, a sea of dead – repeated.

Bare wooden ships, no ports of call
lonely wooden ships on a barren sea.

Listing ships in rows of names, soldier's names
sailor's names alphabetized, slowly leaning to port
the gentle waves, friendly waves, good-byes
whispered from the decks, heard only in passing.

Bare wooden ships, no ports of call
lonely wooden ships on a barren sea.