Maiden Voyage

Fingerless gloves, cirulation sluggish and blue.
Latchkey girl of matchstick size, she sees events, makes timely
predictions.

She wears a sailor's cameo
- Tom's his name.
Thumbs too numb to hold it, but inside there's a faded picture of
him.

She saw him on Tuesday in her mind's eye.
A stranded rare bird, oil slicked and lost at sea.
Hugging a buoy, bobbing, perishing
- terminating in a rich azure.

Supple with the heat of water infection
sloshing inside her like the black ocean
in Tom's drowned belly, she waits for news of this unthinkable
mess.

The ship comes in without the one known to her.
This Maid Of The Mist, willow the wisp
stealing her Tom
on his maiden voyage
to catch unsinkable fish.

Like his prey
Tom bobbed to the surface two weeks later and returned home.
Gouged eye, seaweed mouth
swollen from the salt of the ocean floor.
He was angry, and stronger than before.