Laura Mullen

Doesn’t that shining line Of ocean, broken Suggest a ship at sea, Or something? Ah, if to be “At sea” is to be lost, Left out, or just un- Certain of the meaning, Someone else chimes in. Nevermind, I’m sure it’s Nothing, someone else insists Of this impossible vessel — Crafted of affect and lack Of glasses, the sail a conceit Of low clouds, the bow A row of breakers, sun Glinting off the port- Hole (imagined) of the cabin Below whose bed is also, As we say, the sea- Bed or floor(as if it were A dwelling down there, Where the restless sleepers Are scattered bone). A ship At sea is only a figure Of speech somebody else Claims: a quick shape — Suggested by the passage Of a cloud and the tug Of  the current; a thin dream Already almost forgotten ... If you can forget the cargo, Another adds, which was Human: though that fact Was somehow less visible To the traders than the trade Routes traced out across The dissolving paper Map, under a spill of silver Coins poured out. Life Is brief, one might sigh At this point: a matter Of water in water Moving, each of us Carefully bearing The bags we packed With cherished flotsam And jetsam, clutching A one-way ticket Printed on a spume Of wind-blown white ... A pretty image, used To excuse too much: As if the lives enslaved Were worthless as this Sudden welling up Of what is mostly self- Pity (salt at my lips, You say, my vision Swimming). Nothing. It’s nothing but ... It’s nothing. To be At sea is also to be, As we say, astray or In the dark, hoping For terra firma, and To be enlightened, Soon, as to just what Was meant by that sad Laugh and last remark.

She appears to be recognized as herself and not herself, new because endlessly recycled, not what she was but not what she will be—see? Not married and not not married, the processional’s a ritual meant to extend a magical present, until the head of this pin is the size of a rented hall and all of us angels stepping out on the long blank train of her on-going gown. To go in single and come married out is easy enough, what matters is to enlarge the interstitial, to live as long as we can in the not exactly no longer and the not quite not yet also. Where organ music drowns the ill-digested vows and the empty stomach growls. Hesitant. The BND goes down slow as a pill we can’t really swallow, stuck chunk in a stalled gulp between yesterday and tomorrow, at one and the same time belated and punctual. It’s the system itself we’ve come to see (open the plug of that rubber-edged rose window), not me and not you, but we: the marriage of church and state made visible, audible, available. Here Dearly Beloved’s an embarrassing gurgle, and the costly gown so much densely crumpled bathroom tissue backing up one overworked way in and out of the usual world. From the mouth to points South, scrawl that in soap on the vehicle? From “will you?” to “why don’t you ever?” on the march to “irreconcilable.” Hey—whoa! Away with you hand-wringing nay sayers: be here now now now now…. Cheeks are flushed and eyes overflow as we grasp her new handle, here to hear the I do as a couple of hard blows: that flesh-blunted sound of bone on bone dislodging as cough a caught morsel not thoroughly chewed. Back out, back up, quagmire, circle: proposed solutions involve the usual budget expansions, extended tours of duty, and additional troops.