Lots of ships have already sailed and I wasn’t on any of them and none came to save me from anything I’ve wanted rescued from. Once I thought of a front porch as a ship, the rising and falling torrent of leaves on the hill beyond the porch rail as waves breaking at the prow. I was reaching, I think, the page so new to me then and all my pens and pencils rowing for some kind of shore. That was a mistake, you know, almost always it’s out to sea you want to be rowing. Almost always I can’t abide greeting cards but a few weeks ago I came across this at the drugstore—two amphibious looking creatures like you’ve never seen before standing on a rock with flood waters rising all around and the ark afloat out in the distance. Oh, crap, one says to the other. Was that today? It made me laugh so I brought it home and stuck it on the fridge with a little calendar magnet from the insurance company—but that’s how easy it is to die, that little forgetting. All ships are she, a poet I once met said. She came walking up behind me one summer on a college sidewalk with a friend and as she caught up she said, How old will you be forever? I said Fifteen, and she said to her friend, See, I told you she’d know what I meant. That was a good ship, alright. I am still trying to name her.