Oarsman

The extraordinary weight of quotidian desire,
even when it has faded to a tenuous burden:

if one tried to land a ship on Neptune
one would sink at first through imperceptible air
for longer than the earth is wide, until the weight of it all
was insupportable, and the air under its own heft
became a viscous ooze. Exactly so.

(Still, what medium else, to carry a shout?
Whales may sing in the water, but we may not.)

If I honor my misplaced hands, it is not for their strength,
but for their curiosity. I cup the syrupy air in one hand --
pour it to the other. the difference
between gas and liquid was never made clear to me:
I only know that neither can be mastered.

(All bellowing would be only the blowing of bubbles
and the thrumming of vocal cords, damped and strictured,
would be the faintest grumble on the muddy ocean floor.)

Still, some work of noble note may yet be done, 
or anyway sketched 
onto a whiteboard, blurred and thumbed.
Rally, my hearties, and raise a cheer
to rise, like a pout, from under boiling eggs:

we moved heaven and earth from here to there, upon a time,
and if we knew nor whence nor whereunto
was that our fault? We did as we were told.