Boyle, Peter

The transformation boat

1. Just an old plain boat travelling the coastline
2. and wherever it came to rest its prow against the wharf
3. from small town to small town
4. life suddenly would arrive in people’s houses.
5. Dogs and children would stir around midnight
6. touched by the light that comes from there,
7. a wavering across all that darkness.
8. Thin stars would penetrate the hands of business men
9. and make them give away all their belongings
10. and enter into the fire
11. or a woman would walk out of a house at dawn
12. and wake next standing in the souk at Marrakesh,
13. her midriff spangled in gold, dancing in ecstasy,
14. her twining arms freed to the sky’s rapture.
15.  
16. The boat would glide into the harbour at midnight
17. and sail off before dawn
18. and in the plaza of the quiet town
19. a thin girl would be rolling a hoop at sunset
20. while other children dart in and out of doorways,
21. sheltering behind bushes and tall mysterious garbage bins,
22. playing at gangsters and police,
23. and all the time
24. the boat’s sails grew steadily like a shadow in their minds.
25.  
26. Someone said Odysseus was on board
27. and if you stood before the skipper’s wheel at full noon
28. you’d see the crew were Circe’s swine rooting their noses in swill.
29. Another said it was the Flying Dutchman,
30. another the boat to the Fortunate Isles.
31.  
32. In plain day without leaving anywhere
33. a girl at the sink draining pasta would kneel to receive the lord.
34. A small wren would speak from the freezer section of the supermarket
35. and I would take my fear of breakage and walk forward steadily
36. the way dreams do.
37.  
38. When the boat left, someone saw water tumbling out of the sky —
39. a boy recorded how midsummer snow
40. was falling across the outback.
41. And all that blocks us from loving would pass away
42. like mist over glass
43. and our hands, wiped clean of every line,
44. could begin at last their journey to the sun.