Small Craft

A stout woman in a black pantsuit driving a black jeep:
does she picture herself in fatigues and a helmet,
dangling cigarette, left leg cocked jauntily over the side?
Our boys cruised over the Siegfried Line like that.

Or the woman with her hair clutched back by barrettes,
in the battered silver Toyota, grimly piloting
her way into the Death Star: a suicide mission
to keep her family from destruction;

or again, driving the old Mercedes,
its interior afloat with masses of dark hair,
the hands of toddlers and the tails of dogs waving
like sea fronds, her sunglasses perched like false eyes

on the back of a creature with no other defense
than to look bigger than it is, and fiercer:
does she hear the blip blip of the sonar,
the silent running of the hidden ship?

The cafe rocks with the shifting of the plates
and I am peering out the window as we start:
the engine of the milkshake stirrer wakes;
we cast off, cruising past the cars and waving trees.

The lurching of upholstered seats, the rocking
of the tables, the silverware aslide on the formica:
Oh yes, we too, we too are underway;
we have our hidden destinations too.