Our Wake   I have built you a boat, my love — the joints are tight, the timbers true, the tapered lines murmur chanties and swells and compass points, cargoes rich with spices, silks, incense, wine. This is our boat. Come aboard. I will take up the oars and bend my back to the sea; our boat will glide like a skipjack, our wake will spread the seawrack streaming behind; free from the cares we’ve discarded on the shore, I watch them shrink behind you far astern; you fix your eyes forward, past me, past more than the heaving prow, the horizon burning rose, burgundy — no charts for where we are bound, no land, no boat, no sky, no sea                                                for Meg     © Michael Fleming Franconia, New Hampshire July 2007