Full Moon

Awede wint moon full pearls

Aweightte wint sun comenopp oerhyl,

Lowing boathorns shook the chest

Labourers piling cargo boxes bound for far-off Oxgangs, Africa and Asia.

Pasty obese man’s arm coloured light

Rebounds with ripples from moon to sea.

Rare expletives abounding at the loading dock,

Viscous hours yet pent until a crowing cock,

Fit to box at Thassos, glory of Arcadi, those moulds,

Hoisting boxes with irons aloft tossing them in holds,

Old brine stubborns between the beams

Avoiding sluice grilles like on an abattoir floor.

Inside the hull below the spalting mantle Beams thick as horse barding;

Walls to rival Jericho’s Jericho.

Though slight fear of buccaneer these days, nor of storm and board by mustered forces

Spanish flags flying and air acrid with spent shot, blood tide’s red horses.

Swarth waves enfolding absorb sidereal light,

Bruised evening regally purpureal,

Illegally-acquired cargo stored in the belly of the Argo.

Wine dark sea the harbour’s uncaskable arbour,

Scratching from a bunk, porthole’s momentary conjuration

Thought Homer’s scribbling the rats scrabbling across rafters

Scatter at malkin’s passage, his maw their hereafter,

Heaving ocean the heft of ships nothing, like feathers.

Alchemisland