Poem in Baltimore

Looking out over the harbor's sunny surface

Nothing is known.

Some ship, some white ship

Whose captain I will never meet

Passes slowly by.

(Rooms full of faces,

leaning forward to hear some word that will save their life.

"Don't look in my direction," I want to say,

But they do, as if, as if.

I have nothing to say and I know it. I am the white ship.

I am the water in the harbor, the clouds, the green grass along the banks. Who knows what I'll say next.)

("Even the simplest things baffle me." That's what I want to say.

I am undone again and again.

    You cannot open me over and over.

    You cannot take all my belongings.

    You cannot leave me stranded without a place to put down the one black anchor.)

I am the white ship, sailing out to meet a horizon that doesn't exist.

I have nothing to say that the gulls and the wind don't say, that the white ship doesn't murmur, sailing out to meet a horizon that doesn't exist.

"Listen outside the walls." That's what I want to tell them.

Listen to the water in the harbor, the clouds, the green grass along the banks.

Who knows what they'll say next?

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