VESPUCCI’S OCEAN

We sail across
     Vespucci’s ocean,
inhaling the salt-ladened
air like frolicking dolphins

as supple as the waves
     we navigate.
They heave and rasp as the
Atlantic rolls like a mariner’s lullaby,

while Cuba crouches
     in the vague distance
like a torpid centipede,
a failing western sun hovering

over its spine. We wrestle
     the undulating sea
doing twenty-four knots at a
longitude beyond our reckoning,

and a latitude
     beyond our scope
sailing somewhere in the domain of
Vespucci’s ocean