Peace Wades Strife

An ocean, a gulf of stirring waters
From within barnacles deposit
Layers form a reef topping waves
Reaching for the moon
Flying like Icarus
Toppling down edifices

The charging sheephead frazzled
Find seven to eight dazzled

Spirit-filled lagoon
Creatures sense clamorous
Stopping at precipices
Feathery shadows blurring voyageurs
One by one to beaks they do submit
Lest they rest in splash-blackened caves

None is the wiser
Than the wizened old crag
Jutting out over vast domains
Stretching past frenetic sea life
Yawning above the mawing grottos
For many suns, moons and stars alight

From birchbark canoes paddled
To lighthouse captains addled

How would a crag become fishwife
Other than through Poseidon’s pains
Doling fish with bent scrag
Incognito, the crag always knows
The crabby miser
From the oceanic plebiscite—

Unknown depths that trigger
Growth, change and fish to walk
Complex interweaving of seaweed
Marine life and brine
Arising mid-stroke man-o-war
Stings to kill unknown prey

Battleships, war embattled
Oft the crag, on them tattled

Oh, if the crag would talk
Of bubbling entwined
Of prices sailors pay
To man iron ships decked for war
Their life, red-slicks, sinks with their thought need
A floating outrigger