Sailor’s Dirge

Sailor’s Dirge

thick clouds circulate
past the farmhouse
and the Lutheran preschool
spruce and pine guarding
one lane highway
like green hands lifting burdens
no time for pulling Coho
from the freshly stocked
Snohomish river

visiting fortress gates
on the road to incarceration
Swedish bodhisattva passes
electronic locked doors
a thousand times over
keys to freedom
dripping from a book
decades to payback debt
all at the fork in the road
tears of children
whine of bagpipes
for a wretch lost and found