Poem in a little different mood.
It's a sailing poem, I mean the incident
is from sailing on San Francisco Bay,
in case any of the local references
escape you at the moment.
It's called "The Cormorant."
[AUDIENCE CHATTERING]
The cormorant.
Past Fort Point we came in running,
the fishermen clustered on the black rocks and the air
full of improbabilities.
Running with the wind, a beam wind fair all the way.
The air speaking the sails, the sky full of paper wings,
your eyes afire with wonder.
But halfway in you cried out and I turned
and saw the sick cormorant.
Drifting on slack tide it came past, flotsam,
what life left paid out in barely keeping afloat.
Oiled down, that veteran of nautical heaven
fell here to die.
Deep diver, that far seer, surveyor
of mistrals knowing on spring's fairest day what it is to dive.
Come from the miriamorphic kiss of winds
to drown in the oil slick spread by some tanker from Martinez,
Crockett, or Richmond
[ENGINE ROARING NEARBY]
Helpless it drifted by.
The fog rolls under the bridge.
Some little while we float then sink in seas of chemistry.