22 January 2017

The hull, encrusted with barnacles,
I was of two minds about.
Sea-life had worked the wood
with design, worked whorls
of majestic beauty, whelks
of finest shell, and shapes
from the seabed so rare,
were they even earthly?,
the work, surely,
of subterranean spirits!
I lay aside my newly sharpened
scraper to contemplate
Nature’s art hung on the boat,
in the museum of the real.

Philip Kuepper
(13 January 2017)