Poetry Wednesday

Row

We have balanced a rowboat
across the coffee table.
We get in each day and row,
me, swinging the bat to fight off seaMonsters and
you, holding the compass and shielding my eyes from the sun.
There are fish
that fly overhead and land
sometimes in our boat to be cooked and eaten by you,
named by me, and sung to.
And we row
Singing two different shanties at once,
an unconscionable noise
we wouldn't dare make in the dark,
when seaThings swim up
to the swollen belly of the boat,
there to sleep,
held fast by suckers and slime.

We tie the boat up to the table when we sleep.
We use a simple knot.


Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd something not-mine that I love:

The Rabbit
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Hearing the hawk squeal in the high sky
I and the rabbit trembled,
Only the dark small rabbits newly kittled in their neatly dissembled
Hollowed nest in the thicket thatched with straw
Did not respect his cry.
At least, not that I saw.

But I have said to the rabbit with rage and a hundred times,
"Hop!
Streak it for the bushes! Why do you sit so still?
You are bigger than a house, I tell you, you are bigger than a
hill, you are a beacon for air-planes!
O indiscreet!
And the hawk and all my friends are out to kill!
Get under cover!" But the rabbit never stirred; she never will.
And I shall see again and again the large eye blaze
With death, and gently glaze;
The leap into the air I shall see again and again, and the kicking
feet;
And the sudden quiet everlasting, and the blade of grass green in the strange mouth of the interrupted grazer.