Newfoundland

Whiteness enough off that coast to last the summer
in chunks of a size to drift among the swells
like lost boats rising bottoms up to glimmer

then dropping from a coastal watcher's view
halfway from here to wherever it is the sky
comes down to touch the water, blue on blue

or even larger continents of white
shot through with green, shouldering breakers
with unhurried calm, things for night

to break on, or even day. You and I,
not having seen such before, go out
to frame each other with one in a camera's eye

and watch a schooner nosing among the bays
scalloped along the fringes of the beast.
The little ship goes near, but turns away

over and over to run, a cur who knows how strong
the behemoth it harries, how final its mere touch.
The white rock nothing notes, but wades along,

a mindless thing, and yet it knows command: we
think of the Titanic, sleeping in its mud,
having discharged a cargo on the sea.