by Nadell Fishman (12/06/06).

I recommend Moby Dick
to mothers and fathers about the be launched.
Champagne to the hull:
it’s Ahab this, and Queequeg that;

boats, water, whales.
Through bathed ears the fetus hears
the intonation of drama,
drama of action, action’s expectations — oh

expectations — we each harbored a craft
fully furnished with unraveling dreams;
each of us dreaming in the red glow
that penetrates the membrane of sleep.

What became of sleep?
My dull body stretched the length
of the unborn one’s numbered days,
until the bow of the boat split

up the middle from a whiteness so grave,
I peed into my socks
and opened my fists
to greet my flesh.


“In the meantime,” appears in Drive: poems by Nadell Fishman,
Brown Pepper Press, Montpelier, 2001.