The boat of a million years,
         boat of morning,
sails between the sycamores of turquoise,

Dawn white Dutch freighter
in the Red Sea—with a red stack—
heads past our tanker, out toward Ras Tanura,
         sun already fries my shoulder blades, I
         kneel on ragged steel decks chipping paint.
Gray old T-2 tanker and a
         white Dutch freighter,

         boat of the sun,
the abt-fish, the yut-fish,
         play in the waves before it,

salty Red Sea
         dolphins rip sunlight
streak in, swirl and tangle
         under the forward-arching wave roll
of the cleaving bow

         Teilhard said “seize the tiller of the planet” he was
         joking,

We are led by the dolphins toward morning.