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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

The Edmund Fitzgerald Death of a Ship

The ship drowned
sinking into the pillows
of the lake,
leaving the surface of the water
with an unmarked complexion
of gray.
A man picks up its story
in a bookstall.
His own life sinking,
a pale cloud on his cheeks.
He feels compassion for a vessel
lost on the horizon.

He turns the pages of the book
marred by mold obscuring the print.
His mouth shapes the lapses in the script.
Memories that should be there
and are gone.
A ship sinking into the murk
below the waves.
His eyes follow its oblivion
like the sun and moon
traveling together above him,
as if destiny were a place
and life measured by its days
matters little in the by and by
that spells its doom.

Published inIndex of all Poems