7Gates: That You Might ‘Know Thyself’
Five Wet Stases
Heel your gunwales to the fresh chop
and hold your lover eye-cornered,
while you run with possibilities
brought to order by the finish line.
One: it's an ideal interface -
no gusts or swell. So rail down all day,
you'll never flip or loose sheet.
Giddy laugh of lover means sex.
Two: the splotches of blackhead whitecaps
do strike your eyes before your sails
so that higher pointing gains nauts,
hysteria driven to peace.
Three: the bluster shakes the tiller,
drafting lover to trimming sheets
between glares and dreaming of sleep,
slung hiking like a praying mantis.
Four: the tide warped slop and bent air
need a reefed main and a storm jib
to keep from where the light's bright at night.
There's hunger in the hard pressure.
Five: the airs evaporate to calm,
bilge sloshing to the rigging's creak,
while the musses are smoothed out of bunks
and red, green and white lights are bled.
Contact the author via email to: sidney.hoover@comcast.net
Copyright © 2004 Sidney Dutton Hoover
Last updated: February 15, 2006