Call Me Ish . . . kabibble

by Suzanne Osborne

Yeah,
never really did
the whale hunt thing.

Mind you, I have had some strange
bedfellows, and I know a shipwreck
when I swim away from it,
so I guess I qualify as a survivor.

Nearly drowned once, too,
pulled from the water
gasping and snorting, heart
pounding, eyes rolling.

True, that was in the pool
at the Y, but hey —
drowning’s drowning,
same clotted lungs, same black vision
of eternities, so what’s it matter
if you’re in the slow lane
of a tiled tub and not adrift
in the illimitable southern seas?

So I’ve stuck to dry land.
And yet, when I see
above the rooftops, alluring
and unnearable as old Ahab’s
ever was, that moonlit spirit-spout,
I think I might yet set sail
to seek my own Leviathan,
my temple or my doom.