NAUSTS
There are emptinesses which hold
the leveret's form in spring grass;
the tern's hasty nest in the shore pebbles;
nausts in a silvery island inlet.
Boat-shaped absences,
they slope to seaward,
parallel as potato drills,
curved a little for access --
a mooring stone, fore and aft,
and a flat stone high up
to guide the tarred bow
or a hooker, pucan, or punt
when the high tide lifted it
up and in, then ebbed,
leaving it tilted to one side,
in its shingly nest.
--Moya Cannon
'WE ARE WHAT WE EAT'
That's what she said,
'Every seven years
almost every cell in our body is replaced.'
I thought of her own art,
how faithfully rendered
the miraculous lines, the miraculous lives,
of feather and bone --
and I remembered an oak rib,
honeycombed with shipworm,
given as a keepsake to another friend,
who had sailed from Dublin to the Faroes
in a wooden fishing hooker,
which was later rebuilt.
These boats are rebuilt, renamed,
until every plank and rib
has been replaced so often
that nothing remains
except the boat's original lines
and a piece of silver,
hidden under the mast.
--Moya Cannon
