On Wyeth's Below Dover

A nameless sloop in sedge grass points

Off toward a sea the sand dune hides,

The blue leached from her hull and joints,

Her cabin echoing old tides

That curled her here to tamer winds.

Her boom protests but little:  short

Jibes shudder to corrosive ends.

Forgotten in the local port,

She leans like deafness to the cry

Of summering children come to race

Her decks with games of 'Capt'n Bligh,'

Till dusk-borne dinner bells sound truce.

The silence holds.  A humid moon

Visits her hull then climbs away

To light atop a nearby dune

Her sightless march into decay.

Moore Moran

© 2002; originally printed in Candelabrum.
Reprinted by permission of the author.