Poem #13

Hymn to the CHESAPEAKE is a book of 59 poems expressing and celebrating the life that is the Chesapeake Bay and the surrounding wetlands

Oh Mother--Dark
in this cradle of time and wounding light
I am afraid of motion--of trees, of stars, of spring,
     of flow and
fall of age of dying of joy and grief
I am afraid of the life that walks on my right hand
     side
and the death that walks just beyond the human
     eye
     on the left
I am afraid of the firelight that is ever changing
And the thrusting rocks that do not change by
     human time

Here, in the Shallows
There's a ladder and a dozen or so timbers holding
     the
          house above the bay
Directly above the timbers--a deck
          where the oyster watcher watches
          in his mittens and wool hat
          with his pipe and eyeglasses
And above the deck, watching, perches the tiny
     house with windows
          on four sides--all watching the oyster beds
          or storms fathering storms
or poaching trawlers

Here in the shallows of Curtis Creek hard to port
     off Baltimore
          harbor, lie the ghosts of barges hard and tugs, of
               sailing vessels in mirroring water
Here in the black water in the images of hull and
     bridge
          thrown skyward, here rising and falling
          in the hold and forecastle, in the memory of
               binnacle lamps
once burning, now hushed
The tide slithers unrelenting through decks of
     rotting timber

The photographer stands in a canoe in choppy sea.
Click
          ...graveyard of skeletal timber, spar and
               mizzenmast
          of hulking wreck of barge and bugeye, skiff
               and ketch
          There lies the pungy's spine
          The ribs of a barkentine that plied the coffee trade

          There sails as a ghost ship the John T. Ford
          who pitched her crew and sailed the Atlantic
               upside down
          her mast as centerboard, her keel as sail
And there lies the Priscilla, whose captain's son
     was washed overboard to drown, and then by
     sea washed aboard again

          and how the boy sleeps now
          how he sleeps pale and washed in the sunlight
          drifting through the weeds

          in the shifting remains of his father's cabin
          how he tosses, greeneyed, crabpicked and
               beckoning
          and how his mother, who died in the wreck,
                washed from him
          now sings in her sleep
          how she whistles and weaves in her rocking
               chair of wind and water
          and the children in their homes at Baltimore
               harbor
               go rushing to their windows
               whenever she sings

(c)Robert P. Arthur               1993

from Hymn to the CHESAPEAKE

Road Publishers, Painter, Virginia