Normandie

He sleeps now much of the day, my Florida visitor,
conserving life, its slight thread thinning out.
His head slumps back in the big plush chair, and the eyes

that so much hurt him close in shallow rest.
The children want to watch TV. I must distract them,
blunt their cheerful noise somehow. A book is near

my hand, filled with sumptuous paintings of old ships.
I open it, disclosing bronze ramming keels
built by war-minded Rome, and clever upwind sailing

of Spanish merchants, or the knife-sharp lines of swift
tea and opium clippers, the murdering squat shapes, end-on,
of the cold grey battlewagon fleets of the Great War.

We speak quietly of these things, and I gently open out
the folded center, the book's masterpiece: a cutaway view,
rich in reds and blacks, of the long-hulled liner: Normandie.

I seem to remember having read this was an unlucky boat,
yet knowing nothing of the particulars, only indicate,
admiring, its intricate design. The big chair stirs;

the clouded eyes swing briefly into focus. His voice
comes clear: "I was on that boat the day she sank."
We gape at him. "Yes, I fought ship fires in New York

that year, in a suit of white asbestos, spaceman-like.
The ship, they said, was hit by saboteurs. We tried
to save her, but she settled sullen in Harbor mud

and was to be broken up for scrap." We wait for more, but he
lolls back his head again, and the blood-blown lobe
of his brain strikes sleep. I shoo the kids outside

and rearrange the fireplace logs to keep his body warm,
wondering what else I do not know about
this loved and fading flesh that gave me life.