Rockinghorse Sea
Light pushes the vessel into wave
after wave because light changes
wind to and fro.
Amphoras have handles
to correct the roll, their size ranges
from monster to minor.
Not at all light,
she hauls the net,
she bandies about
what she’s caught:
a baby, eyes open,
born of the boat they’re chasing,
a route
that threatens to whirpool.
It won’t happen
because the baby — alive! — distracts
the helmsman, another Botero,
who steers
the boat into the light which knocks
several degrees off their course and tears
several of the sheets in star rips.
Light
in the waves physics promises
gets wind
going so the boat baptizes quite a bit
of the rest of the booty,
the amphorae shimmed
tight against the mast
loose.
The baby cries
the wind away, the sun solves
the helmsman’s error, the faster boat
flies beyond the nativity to Alvarez,
a pleasant port,
light in decay asymptote
to fools adrift
in the wine-dark bay.
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