sings and hums and talks and whispers to itself.
It never sleeps.
It groans, it shudders to the rhythm of the waves.
Its timbers creak
in the language of every port it has put into -
the backchat, the patois,
the babble, the Babel, the smuggled rich lingo
of each dockside bar.
But hush: don't tell the captain or the bosun
or the loosely rhyming crew:
there's really nothing to it, poetry,
just air, hot air and paper, oh, and skill
and love and hope, between them
and the deep dark silent sea.