In the meantime,

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.

This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2006.

Nadell Fishman