I am lodged in it:
have taken up residence—
permanently, you might say,
for the arrangement is not
an emergency one:
no panic rush
(as if to sandbagged
bunker or trench)
when the siren sounds
and everybody else
is caught, unprepared,
in the terrible rain.
This ark is my home.
It is where I live.
And being—by one
definition at least—
a kind of craft,
it feels all buoyancy,
all lively response
to wind and tide.
Floods are the element
it rides upon,
with even the most
tempestuous of storms
only confirming
blow by blow
how soundly seaworthy
a thing it is.
O it has borne me
on many journeys
without change of address!
For there is, of course,
no need to swap arks
in mid-ocean.
One will suffice.
One, under every onslaught,
will last—
if, that is,
built to conform
plank by plank
to those specifications
(ineffaceably blazed)
which each new voyager
in his own time
must decipher afresh.
