ManicDDaily

Submarine (WWI)

The men would scurry from one end of the canister
to the other, human ballast for flow
or torpedo, as he, captain, peered out the short tower
through a glower of misted glass; his task: to make sure
of not-missing, though they did not miss much
at the range submergence admitted.

There were many seamen, of course.
able-bodied no longer, and passengers he justified
with rue.  But what he most remembered was
the horse, the spidered dapple of twitching flanks,
the waves of quake and pulse as it was push-pulled towards
a leap onto a metal lifeboat–how the sky over the
North Atlantic–he seemed to see the whole
through the small skewed scope–
bunched grey as the clouded flesh, bucking teeth yellowed
as sea foam, wild eyes red-blackened
as oiled flames, the darkened forelegs battering the clatter
like swung clubs of the falling night.

He ordered the U-boat down
shouting you, you, at men who needed to move
to keep the balance,
only it was not exactly you in German,
and the tramp of their bare feet less
like hooves–

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A poem of sorts for the 7th day of this April – 2015 National Poetry Month–linked to Real Toads Open Platform.  A German U-boat was a submarine–I think the official name was “untersee boot.”   The above photograph is not mine, and all rights are reserved to the holder.  (In my poem, the men are scurrying around inside the U-boat, not on the top, but I just loved that photograph.)