Capricorn

Capricorn

Capricorn

Through the end of an old Coke bottle he tracks
   the flight of a petrel, until it is tattered by
sea-wind and another blurred mintage of the sun.
   Along the pier, he hears the men with their
reels, with their currency of damp sand. His rod
   quivers – weighted not with fish, but with

the names of storms: Harmattan, Vendavales –
    turbid winds running the vanguard of
dangerous straits. He kicks at a pile of fishscales:
   galleon ballast, a hoard of ducats spilled
from an old Dutch dogger. The men will soon
   chase him off, this raucous hero plundering

brigs. But now the bottle is a horn into which
   he pours so much breath, and the air has
a tone borrowed from a blowhole, from wind
   singing through a bridge's rusting struts.
A crab sifts sandgrains for its hole; its claw,
   an old sea-brigand's hook, is paying out

doubloons and threats. Ah, but you know – if
   you were to take this child's hand, if you
were to keep his gaze in yours and wait for
   each circulation of his breath; if you were
to watch the pirated scenes of daydreams
   play out through a windfall of glass – then

you'd see the copper-coloured sun. You'd walk
   this beach a long time with your thoughts
trading in weather and wind, the petrels keeping
   pace with the rackish lines of dreams
sailing in with the clinker-built storms. The past
   and the present would not be depressions
       
facing each other, nor would there be grains
   of sand abrading your fate... On the shore,
a gull, dead from the night's storm. With his rod,
   the boy flings it up, the glove of a dueller
he's just Zorroed with his sword... No, the world
   would not be a wave repeating its collapse,
but whatever mintage of story a boy can find
   among fishscales, sand, and the common
issuance of wind; a boy who knows nothing
   of the linkages between storms; nor of
the men, yet, who log weather's quick decay
   onto gauges of abuse; who knows nothing
about paying for that old voyage toward death.