I have listened to buoys extol
shallows. Shackled amid rollers,
anchored among breakers and shoals,
their tall hollowing called sailors
to safe harbor. But I have heard
other fugues. Sounding a dolor
pitched too low to deliver word
up from their species of domain,
wrecked ships sang on their anchor chains.

Let the long-legged waves walk slowly.
Let the tide tatter my swift bait,
leaching herring stink, a holy
plume of oils that must dissipate
down dark currents. Let the flood
flood. Let the ebb ebb. Let me wait.
Let me cup my hands. Let salt scud
through my cup, cold against my skin.
Let the edge of the sea creep in.

When the Citation struck Seal Rock
and sank, her purse seine swung down-tide.
All the next day her corkline, chocked
to her still, slewed a compass ride.
That salt-clock, axled to the moon,
bears on all mesh. The sea collides.
Every vessel sails to ruin.
Wood, aluminum, or plate steel,
each hull shall rest among wolf eels.

from A Fisheries Scientist Confesses His True Survey Design

Peter Munro is a fisheries scientist who works in the Bering Sea, the Gulf of Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and Seattle. Munro’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in Poetry, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Iowa Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Passages North, The Cortland Review, The Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Comstock Review, Rattle, The Literary Review, Carolina Quarterly, Prime Number, Poetry Northwest, Bryant Literary Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and elsewhere. Listen to more poems at www.munropoetry.com.