He made the Leviathan for the sport of it,
The Lord of my childhood. Her fluke
The size of two sleek rowboats
For lifting and drawing down
Knifelike into the water
Or for slapping—so many gestures
A fluke or fin can make with or
Without ruin. I remember
A whale rolling sideways
Just—it appeared—so I could see her
Waving or flirting, her eye deeply
Winking at my eye, no more
Human for that. Can’t
Even say she was real beyond
The tide of my imagining or I
Beyond hers, so completely out
Of scale were we, so soundly
Did she sink and finally not
Come up. The Lord of my childhood
Made her to flirt and nurse, to sing
But not to me, for
Enchantment and for love. Believing
I am not superstitious, I make
Her like any muse
To bewilder me, to say
As the wave curls overhead cast
Loose, be charmed, be lost, for
God’s sake remember, be wild.
Psalm 104, for Lincoln Ure
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[…] “Bewilder,” by Katharine Coles […]