Photo by Peter Krocka
This poem by Maddie Christmann ’18, written in Creative Writing class as an emulation of Robert Wrigley’s “After a Rainstorm,” will be published in the November/ December issue of the national print magazine, Cicada.
“The Shipwreck” after “After the Rainstorm” by Robert Wrigley
Because I have come to the seaside at day,
the ship arrives also from the toppling waves.
I trace my fingers along its splintered wood, and I note
in the light of the lustrous sun now at its peak
how it, a glistening vessel, has been
by sheets of plump raindrops and howling wind
weathered around its hull and thus made
the Titanic, a dream resting in the dark depths.
Maybe because it is day, it is shifting,
or maybe because it too senses
what it has become, it seems
to be waiting for me to mend it
to whatever scurvy spirits might still abide here,
that they might return to this broken dream,
in which there are masts and sails and a man
who doesn’t carry a single tool it needs.