SeaSick
Chubasco winds are blowing down the Baja
driving whitecaps over the sullen grey-green.
The swells’ll be fierce tonight, my guts tell
me so.
Buoys are reeling around out there like drunkards,
I’m recalling what I don’t like about these
waters.
Nausea, violence, the relentlessness of a wind
whipping and scoring the water and rocks--
ancient as the darkness on the face of world.
Old stone has been split by these cruel sisters.
Some things are still too strong for men,
and our only hope is to build crude shelters
to wait out the storm.
Today the sea has her normal musky smell, as
in fair weather
I feel betrayed, recognizing a friend’s cloak
on enemy shoulders
but then I always knew she kept strange company:
faith in her faithlessness, after all, is still
faith
I’ve learned this much from the sea.
They’re imprudently weighing anchor now
I’ll be seasick in an hour, don’t trust what
I’m saying,
rantings of a wave-tossed man not meant for
open water;
rough seas are no time for writing. Still
some will talk of disturbances of the inner
ear
“a simple loss of equilibrium, like vertigo.”
They’ll commend the soothing effects of this
medication
or that old remedy, beware--
They lie.
It’s a wicked spell cast by jealous gods
to ward foolish mortals from their prize.
They turn a man’s body against itself
making it fold within,
claiming it as their own and wracking it
even as they torture the sea’s calm surface
until it can’t help but be belligerent
inside and out, cantankerous and mean.
So I’ve requested permission to lay below tonight
in a narrow bunk, my wildly rocking cradle,
I’ll stretch out, let the black dreamless
drug-enhanced sleep take me
after a simple prayer,
an appeal and plea,
for calmer water
come morning.
Seasick