Reading Billy Collins’s Ballistics on a Norwegian Cruise
Up and Down The New England Coast
by Carolyn Martin
Damn! It’s morning and I should have known
you’d make me rue my lack of pad and pen.
You’re churning up images I can barely hold.
White caps flee the cruise ship’s cut … eager pods
carve fast lanes … seabirds bob mindlessly …
stripped of clouds and land, the horizon’s free …
or approximations thereof. When I pin down
my first draft, I’ll make sure to allude
to Ovid, Frost, Valery, or anyone you approve
who connects to the sea or some other place
like Paris, the Charles, or that ubiquitous room
where you stare out the window at yourself
across the street or grab a post-sex cigarette.
Right now, my coffee’s hot and so is the sun rising
on this coast long before it yawns at home in Oregon.
The guys at the next table aft are winding up
a breakfast chat on the suspect nature of humanity
and the reprieve of shaving for a week. I imagine
your stopping by to commentate on the virtues
of a clean face, French pastries and how this listing ship
is not what you had in mind for a morning stroll.
Tonight, I suspect, while high rollers roll
their luck across the packed Casino floor
and karaoke races through the Starburst Lounge,
I’ll hole up in my room – the one with a balcony
looking down on glacier blue smudging through
persistent grey – and re-read your book.
I’ll have turned down drinks at the Bali Hai
and line dancing in the Bliss to ponder how you move
from “August in Paris” to “Hippos on Holiday.”
Gyroscope Review !31