Harbor Song

She’s taped drawings over all the panes
of her room’s one window.
The papers glow a bit with light from outside.

She traces one of the drawings—
three rabbits, in outline—with her index finger.
“My eyes were sick of seeing that cross.”

The cross is a flagpole.
The flagpole is a mast.
The mast has four crossbeams

but she could see only one
through her window.
A bell at the docks rings seven times.

We fold like the unused sails
of a tall ship in permanent harbor.

***

Peter Borrebach lives in Miami, FL.

Read also Staircase on a Gas Storage Tank Shadowed in Uncharred Paint, Hiroshima.