“If I knew how to write a poem, I wouldn’t.”   

                                                                          James Galvin
 

 
My wife, there you are, safety, lifeboat and oar.
Your controlled poetry, so effortlessly formal.
Your small hands float like waves over the keys:
engraved ivory glyphs on laquer black buttons.
 
You are, when I wake from dream, working
on some stuck thing lodged sideways like
a bone in your heart. How much like an old
glass tintype negative making the little-
dress-black letters appear on silk sheet 
smooth silver white illuminated screen light.
 
There is a cracked yellow whale bone 
somewhere, somewhere, scrimshawed 
and ashed with your image. Loving, safe
harbor, the only treasured hope for a sailor, 
so very long gone, married to the sea and you.