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The Mutiny on the Bounty

featuring a cemetery, a horizon where the sea lies, and exotic stones.

It came again tonight before I put my hand
to the porthole, anticipating a long night plucked.
My shiny new dream wondered patiently, its streamers
wild, anticipating the dropping of my head to the side . . .
As I'd put it now on not one of my best days, my ship
had come in. I wasn't bossy, harsh, tyrannical.
I was windy, a bit naive, and easily seduced.
I came to be seduced. The atmosphere was lax,
if anything. The days were sunny and damp. It was
my ship, and it had come in.

In the moonlight footsteps huddle together-footsteps!-
yet even delusions crush. This dream loves its dream
and ripples under fingers. Listen, my first love began,
it is the same addiction. It is the same addiction:
a wheat field's chattering in the wind, the first birds in weeks.
The sounds of birds is the same thing. It is the same song.

It came again. With no exceptions, I've wanted it.
The wave dissolves into rays. The rays echo a moon song;
they sing right through like bottlerockets.
A carefully considered reply below me doubles
and gains lightness-pumice stone, the body's surface,
sad questions outside the window. They mouth themselves,
obeying only the firmament and the storms of clouds
dying in the places where clouds are stored.

--Karri Harrison




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