HOME FROM SEA

by Jeffrey Park

Had he been a mariner my father

would have thought only in nautical

terms –leagues, fathoms, dead slow,

lines and shrouds and knots that are

speed and knots that are tied – would

have sailed the South Sea in search

of breadfruit and a nut-brown bride.

He’d have had wood-grain skin

and a stare that scoured infinity.

Had he been a sailor, my father would

have slept in a berth instead of a bed,

would have called the ship’s hold

his home. But he never sailed

on a ship at all. He never went to sea

or felt a deck roll under his feet.

A house far from shore was his frigate

and the barnacles on the basement walls

spent their lives dry and confused.