Alexis Marshall

Calm Seas


Lying in bed
Ditching certainty
Reframing the ocean

Three feet deep

Friends, walking to Portugal
For an afternoon
Or wading through the Gulf
Returning video tapes
To some streamline-holdout
In New Zealand

The backs of whales
Peeling in the sun
Wrecked ships
Turned over
Spilling their cargo into heaps

A man in his seventies
Standing in the middle of the Atlantic
His dog across his shoulders
A rope around his waist
Trailed by an old, aching trunk

We both nod as I pass
Hands in my pockets
A copy of Repo Man
Kindly rewound to its beginning
Tucked beneath my arm



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