If I didn’t know better, I would think
I was in a ship’s hold, hearing the beams
groan, sails snap against their stays.
And not here under March’s bare
canopy. The heaving branches.
A hammer pounding a wooden peg.
A point to wrap a spooling rope around.
There isn’t a sea in sight.
I have to feel the roiling waves
and night rocks jutting out
past a pointing jetty.
A walkway. Stones cast up,
it seems, from an ocean quarry.
Snapping me back to where I
really am. Walking on hard land.
Having just learned, a protest on my
campus turned violent. Word
against word, trying to be silenced
and more. The speaker and his host’s
car rocked. My colleague had her
neck sprained. Someone, in a mask,
pulled her down by her hair. Even
if all I have are some of the facts.
In these times hard to come by.
The truth always being changed.
No one can deny the wind and
the branches hammering against
each other. No matter if they sound
like waves crashing the sand. Those men
and women chained to their scraping oars.
— Gary Margolis, Cornwall