THE NAUTICAL BLOGS
by Craig Morgan Teicher
Now it’s raining, hard, and
what does that mean? The Internet
shines through the rain like a tiger’s eye
through the jungle dark.
Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow,
nor hail shall make me
fold up my paper sail.
Words enter the field as
memories taking center stage
for an encore. Someone
talked about sails today, and
tonight, perhaps, the nautical
blogs are afire with chatter
about the weather as reported on the TVs
versus the weather as experienced
on the high seas. There are over
200 bones in the human body,
and a blog for every one, I’m sure
(which means, of course, I’m not
sure. In fact, I have no idea
but the one I’m writing out right now.
Oh! Wait, here comes another.)
Rain is so much water
falling from the sky, without
malice or judgment, though
it rarely goes unremarked
upon—people on dates are
talking about the weather even now
out of sheer desperation:
the blogs attest to a rampant fear
of silence, which, after all
is the one thing we can’t hear,
just like a mirror is the one thing
one can’t see when meeting
one’s reflection face to face.
Hello, I say, interrupting myself
with the very same salutation—the door
is open; I can see it reflected
behind me, and as I walk toward it,
the self I walk away from
follows me in the opposite
direction. And if that’s not
a metaphor, then certainly this
hot rain is: it’s a way
of pulling the camera back,
of taking in a wider and wider
view, until the whole earth
is the size of my pupil,
and things are in perspective
at last. I never dreamed
of being an astronaut until
this very minute, and now
it’s already far too late.
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(photo by Trista Sordillo)
Craig Morgan Teicher’s first book is BRENDA IS IN THE ROOM AND OTHER POEMS. His second, a collection of fiction and fables called CRADLE BOOK, will be published by BOA Editions in May. He is a VP on the board of the National Book Critics Circle and lives in Brooklyn.
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