"Get down to the docks! There's something you have to see!"
And sure enough, moored to the dock
was a gigantic ship made entirely of paper,
bowers, davits, capstans, bumpkins, the whole shebang was paper.
"Aren't they afraid of waterlogging?" I asked the man
standing next to me, who was staring up at the crow's nest
with what I'd guess is a mixture of awe and terror,
"No," he said-- his face was littered with the craters and crevasses
of time's abuses,
"Just hungry sea lions who gnaw at the rudder.
'The billygoats of the high seas,' they call them."
"Oh," I said. "I've never heard that before."
"Yeah, they'll chow down almost anything."
"Yeah, I getcha," I said.
Ethel pointed out a myriad of tiny paper boats
drifting over the baby wakes crashing onshore,
lost in the current, helpless to anything,
and further on, barely specks,
we watched as little paper tugboats
slowly hauled away the few years we had left.
standing next to me, who was staring up at the crow's nest
with what I'd guess is a mixture of awe and terror,
"No," he said-- his face was littered with the craters and crevasses
of time's abuses,
"Just hungry sea lions who gnaw at the rudder.
'The billygoats of the high seas,' they call them."
"Oh," I said. "I've never heard that before."
"Yeah, they'll chow down almost anything."
"Yeah, I getcha," I said.
Ethel pointed out a myriad of tiny paper boats
drifting over the baby wakes crashing onshore,
lost in the current, helpless to anything,
and further on, barely specks,
we watched as little paper tugboats
slowly hauled away the few years we had left.
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