The altar here is a bait box
on a cold deck. The wharf is
our pilgrimage road. We worship
ships lost at sea and the children
who grow up around an absence.
Each morning, the gulls dive
into the wrecks and pull up dreams.
In the grace of fog and foul weather,
we bless the lobster trap
our loaves and fishes.
We are never salt-starved.
Brackish backwater corrodes our coins
and the rockweed clings
to the shoreline like the jinx
of a witch,
a jeteux de sorts
casting her spells like lapwing birds
over the white line of the horizon
and circling us in fog
like sin eater’s breath.
We survive by our wits
and soft-shell clams in tidal surf.
We regret nothing, but pour
the unused salt back into the sea.
And work until birth.
George Moore’s poetry has been published in The Atlantic, Poetry, North American Review, Colorado Review, and Stand. His collections include Children’s Drawings of the Universe (Salmon Poetry 2015) and Saint Agnes Outside the Walls (FutureCycle 2016). A finalist for The National Poetry Series and nine Pushcart Prizes, and retired from the University of Colorado, Boulder, he lives with his wife, a Canadian writer, on the south shore of Nova Scotia.