for the MV Alta, October 2018 to February 2020
Some well-meaning people told me that to find peace
of mind I should try to think about the sound
a tree might make (or not) if it fell in a forest
when there was no one around to hear.
I thought about the ears of squirrels and bears
and owls, and about the minds of human beings.
Then I thought about a disabled, abandoned,
nearly forgotten cargo ship floating
atop three hundred million cubic kilometers
of ocean for sixteen months. Like a leaf
falling from a Siberian aspen, did it drift
in almost complete silence out of view
of every human eye? I like to think of you,
MV Alta, out there alone, sloughing off
fine flakes of orange rust from your bow
into the heavier waves, the wire ropes
stretched from your crane becoming a sort of lyre
making the faintest whistle in the northern wind.
I like to think of the Greenland sharks,
of the humpback whales, of the pollock,
cod, mackerel, halibut, and haddock
that swam beneath your hull. I like to think
of the sooty tern and the wandering albatross
regarding you from above with curious eyes.
And I like to think of the shadows of clouds
drifting across your deck on calmer days
before a storm pushed you onto the rocky Irish coast.
All that time so far, far, far from all of us.
