Picking Up Shiny Things

sailing at vespers

It is canvas now I raise for the wind
to cup and hold like a lover’s face.
For too long my sails were point de gaze,
a mesh so fine it snagged the stars

and caught the dark serifs of every word
intoned. I went nowhere and wondered
at my discontent. Now I feel the halyard
in my palm, imagine I stand in the belfry

and toll anew the hour of my own birth.
The sheets, they peal the wind’s low song
and this deck, it is my campanile. I wear the tulle
that I once flew, hold close the impediments

of that troubled sky. How else could I face
the windward nights? I am who I was,
uncertain hand upon the sanctus bell,
and who I am, a sailor aloft in the rigging.

I ring and come about, a steeplejack
atop the spar. I leave no opal wake,
but tender the chiming of the angelus,
sweet upon the swift, dark water.