Liberty Ship
The boat bound for
Luzon
That bore you into
tomorrow
Somewhere east of the
Marshall Islands
Was a rust bucket out
of San Francisco
Riding high at anchor
When a blacked out train
Pulled out of Macon
On schedule to ferry
you
Over the Colorado
West of Durango
In two days time.
A Liberty Ship
Maybe she ended up
In the green ’52 Buick
That spirited you
across
Oklahoma and Texas
griddle
Or one of thirty
Years of rigs
That stole you away to
hump
Chryslers to Akron and
Scranton and Wheeling.
My desire for narrative
symmetry
Locates some
reconstituted
Element of the old tub
In the power boats you
gunned
Across Anchor Bay
The tandem Cummings diesel
That pulled the R.V.
Down to Kissimmee.
The Liberty Ship
Delivering on a
promise
Time and time again
Unsung trace alloy, perhaps
In the last rung of
the ladder
That conveyed you up
To the terminal beat
of your heart.
