Rain blankets and swathes us, the harbor’s
            gorge rising to meet the leaden
sky, the mighty, hapless Vasa cabled up
meter by straining meter from what she thought
            a final rest; that ship heaves
            into view, barnacled
with bright carvings, polychrome, bristling
with Lutheran ordnance, national pride.

Awning tattered loose in the wind
            and rain; sunbeam marks a clot
            of albumenoid sperm, half-drying
on the tiles. Prosperity’s banners frame
            a concomitant rise in “lifestyle”
            diseases, spotlit Mormon Tabernacle
card slipped into a first-grader’s
lunchbag; the smear of banana; redolent
            moustache.

                                 The war is the crawl
            at the foot of the television
display, body counts ticked off
in pixels and automatic Nielsen
            Ratings. Precious fluids, congealing
            and refined, white as the gloves
on a lager heiress’s pilot hands.
Belts and webbing bulge the prosthetic
            crotch.

                          Ahoy for the cities of ferries
            and kayaks, waterways of Venice,
Stockholm, New Orleans, Amsterdam.
Aseptic Swedish beauty of straight lines
            and white spaces, blips
            of color punctuating the blank;
I hobble through the rain
on cobbled streets, lanes and closes
            rising up at outlandish angles
            from the puddled leaden
bay. The Vasa, dried and trimmed
and swallowed in gloom, haunts
            its vast interior. It waits
            to eat us all.

— Mark Scroggins (© 2009)


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