Four weeks out of port
and I’ve only arrived
at the Nantucket dock
where Devil Dam, Tit-bit &
the claw-footed Pequod squat:
12 more chapters before Ahab appears
but Ishmael’s slept with Queequeg
whose has his own show 
with a tomahawk pipe & ebony idol

Sixty years since I plowed these waters:
then I tore through to the sea
to see the leviathan first hand;
now I’m mired in the nets 
of ignorance, online annotation
and wikipedia (i.e. did you know
the Pequod were a tribe massacred
by the pilgrims for killing 
a drunken, adulterous pirate?)

I call the librarian for an extension
Give me a year I say
Buy your own copy the reply