Robert Klein Engler

The Ark

I saved the postcard from the ship
'Coho' showing her continual voyage
from Victoria to Port Angeles.
Day after day she steams across
the blue shelf that is the Straits
of Juan de Fuca"day after day
she rubs her metal hull against
the thick, jelled sea, like a plow
rubbing compressed earth.

The palm of water on metal,
the opening and closing of effort,
these are equal to breath exhaled
upon a cold, vacant night.
Across the vast space that fills
the world like ice, the sound
of breath repeats the lap of waves,
surges like the wheeze of steam
in and out great pistons.
Here is a vacuum as profound
as water swallowed by the sea.

If you have been far to sea
or looked alone into the well of night
you know how much they are like what
remains to us after alliance and loss.
You know how the earth's swelling
with the breath of a new grave
is not a lacquered box lit by stars
or the salty liquid of complete desire.

Out on purple water the power
to pull us under searches like fingers
against the hull's metal plates, likewise
we could be sucked into a new furrow
or scattered in space among the stars.
This could be if we were not fixed,
held in place by some evidence.
If you have heard of Noah, you know
how day after day he sent a dove,
like these words, across the vast flood.