Outbound in ballast, heavy
with gravel that smells of home.
Our quarry emptied out

in another hemisphere’s bay.
I saved a stone from the hold,
the shape your elbow makes

in my palm. Thirteen weeks
without anchor, only canvas
and straining rope; twice,

I breathed the solace of pines
in wind, carried off an unseen
coast. Our constellations slip

under the horizon as we sail
beyond God. My skin will never
be white again. Two men

already are lost, one swept
over by following seas, the other
slipped from the mast. Below

the Tropic, man-sized birds
and tinsel sky are real, but a grave
beside you would be a fable.

Here, the Horn is lord, with ice
and swells high as the crosstrees.
For passage, we promise apples,

penguin hides, even our thumbs;
given now, or taken eastward.
Both crosses can never be calm.

The Pacific will bring us ashore,
to walk unswerved for more
than a yard, and a holyday

of turnips carved into flowers,
plum duff, and wooden hymns:
a charade that only deepens

the absence it bends to hide.
I would rather pray for sleep
and enough wheat to come home.