For Richard Kenney
This wide-plank skiff of a table
is rigged for travel,
with a sunny window at my back.
I sit alone here, spinning
an old globe beside my chair, its skin
of colors, planet of my own.
I list the places I would go,
the outer regions of my hands,
the tiny nerve-ends twitching in the night,
the peninsular foot, the nether bowels,
the mucous caverns of my inner ear.
I set my sails each morning after breakfast,
pulling sheets from a left-hand drawer,
taking a pen between my teeth.
The spirits seem to blow
four ways at once or, mostly, not at all.
Even Agamemnon had to slay a daughter
just for winds to carry him to Troy.
I, too, have slaughtered my kin
for motion, for a poem to waste.
Now I spread my charts,
correct my compass, and lay down a course
through the next few hours.
May the gods who brood upon these waters
ease my way, direct the passage
of this fragile craft,
this sloop of self I angle into night.