New Found Land

Whiteness enough off that coast to last a summer, with chunks sized to drift among swells like lost boats rising bottoms up to glimmer,

then dropping from a coastal watcher's view halfway from here to wherever it is sky comes down to touch water, blue on blue,

or even larger continents of white shot through with green, shouldering breakers with unhurried calm, things for night

to break on, or even day. You and I, not having seen such before, go out to frame each other with one in a camera's eye

and watch a schooner nosing among bays scalloped along fringes of the beast. The little ship goes near, but turns away

over and over to run, a cur who knows how strong the behemoth it harries, how final its mere touch. The white rock nothing notes, but wades along,

a mindless thing, and yet it knows command: we think of the Titanic, sleeping in her mud -- having discharged frail cargo on the sea.