Rahab

A poem inspired by Moby Dick, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and American whaling culture.

In a vessel on the sea, there, my father waits for me.
Standing high upon the prow abreast the shore he snarls down.
With thunderous voice he calls to me that I walk across the sea.
“Thy cowardice, it weighs thee down! Be a man, or thou will drown!
If thou art truly kin to me, then with thy fury bend the sea!”
Across the surface did I crawl to flinch and flee before the squall.
The furies round me circled white in whirling foam to claim my life.
Then my fingers gripped the rim, and with a heave I tumbled in.
Supine, gasping, there I lay breathing life from ocean spray.
My father laughed and pointed north, “Far beyond now lies our course.
What ship need we to brave the sea? With tooth and nail, we’ll snare the beast!”
The beast my father here bespoke was the prey for which we rowed.
A nameless thing it was of old. Crimson was its serpent form.
Its ruby eyes were filled with blood of the men it swallowed up.
Its many teeth of ivory despite their kills were ever clean.
What quarrel had we with the fish? What made his hunt so worth the risk?
“Wicked! Wicked!” Father shrieked, “Mark thou how it grinned at me!
Years agone, I took my pike to strike that hungry, crimson eye.
In one charge it sundered me and sent me flailing in the sea.
Adrift on wreckage in the sea, my strength was stripped away from me.
I waited for a noble death, but it turned its tail and fled.
Yet as it left me there behind, I caught the glimmer of its eye.
It plunged away beneath the sea with a chirping laugh of mockery.
To mock me so with evil glance! I’ll not live by its sufferance!”
For days we rowed across the waves to seek the beast we could not name.
How my mother begged me so to that voyage there forego.
“Stop thy ears to her appeal. The beast and I are all that’s real.
Be now baptized in the sea to become a man like me.”
In the tossing winds and foam did I drown my thoughts of home.
My father like an idol sat with harpoon laid across his lap
And preached to me a sermon how my life I’d wasted up to now.
“Coddled boy! Why seek thou God? Wilt thou starve beneath an ephod?
What good is Christian piety if thy mouth it cannot feed?
The waters are my altar. I am their high priest. Divinity is laced in thews that conquer sea and beast.
The leviathan will devour thee. The world will pick thy bones, and in thy whitewashed temple thou wilt die alone.
Turn aside and seek with me the truth in man divine. We’ll drink the blood of titan beast a new communal wine!”
Pushing off, we left behind the barren shores of Nantucket’s climbs.
I had no gull to carry me those many leagues across the sea. Our humble whaleboat long and lean would serve in place of ivory.
The whispered waves on beach did sound to sweep the sand with soft meerschaum.
The tolling bell sang forth our launch. The lighthouse beam shone forth our course.
We sailed into the tempest winds that tossed and turned our craft, and perched upon the prow, my father reared his head and laughed.
“Would thou sink this ship? Thou wil-o-the-wisp! I bested thy rage before! I wrestled thy pelagic might until thee spat me on the shore!”
The sunset chased the storm away, a fog crept over the deep, and with it carried ancient visions that troubled me in sleep.
Beneath a starlit night I saw the sea foam sweep and swell and emerge a titan beast that swept the stars off with his tail.
He clashed his giant teeth at me and spoke in angels’ tongues. He prophesied until we met, I’d never see the sun.
Wide he gaped his crooked maw in cold, unearthly laugh, and upon his milky tongue there perched a native with a lance.
His eyes were black as oil; his skin was ivory. He smote upon his hollow heart and wailed these words to me,
“We planted all our mighty tribes on brothers we cast down and fashioned with their shattered bones for us a crooked crown.
Bound in blood are brothers, we, that chew up all the world we see.
Yet though we bridle verdant earth, no man has ever tamed the surf.
Vainly do we smite the sea, for none may slay eternity.
Repent! Repent and flee! Repent! Repent and flee! Thy conquest ends in southern seas!”
The morning came both cold and gray, and not a ray shone down for not a ray of morning sun could pierce those angry clouds.
The waves of fog rolled back, and forth came gilded prow of a magisterial galleon decked with colors of the Crown.
We hailed her as she passed us by. Her sea warped hull did groan, and we beheld her passengers�"a crew of moldered bones.
My father laughed to scorn the helmsman sleeping at his post and jeered to see the captain of this sorry ship of ghosts.
“When hell gapes wide to welcome thee into the infernal, boiling sea, say to master at the gate that I his satellite await!”
Then turned the ghastly captain’s head and with the sea winds to us said,
“He waits for thee in southern seas. To save thy soul thou must now flee.
Beg! Oh, beg and flee! Repent thou of this blasphemy!”
My father scoffed his words away. His blue eyes shone with news of prey.
“They are dreamers. Let us leave them. Let them chase their distant Eden.”
With moan and sigh they carried on, their form diffusing in the fog.
When long we drifted across the sea, I felt a form glide under me.
Its crimson hide, like firelight, shone like a beacon in the night.
“Father! Father! Come to me! There is a form I cannot see!”
The serrulate fang of his harpoon shone like a star by light of moon.
When the devil beast would fain have fluked, my father smote with his harpoon.
“No light of day to chase thee away, thou nightmare of my waking days!
I stand steadfast to smite at thee and claim my filched virility!”
The harpoon with demonic trill plunged into the creature’s gills.
It reared and spewed its hateful laugh, and Father leapt upon its back.
He bit and tore; he struck and screamed, “I’ll have now what thou took from me!
See, I have not turned and fled, but I will hunt thee unto death!
Think thou master of the sea? But no beast shall master me!
Though my life thou freely take, I’ll follow thee to hell’s black gate!”
He plunged the lance into its eye, the crimson orb that passed him by.
He wrenched and tore ‘til blood poured out the toothy maw like chimney spout.
“Thy fire is a warmth to me! I’ll fan the flame in thy chimney!
A cup! A cup! Thy blood I sup as eucharistic wine that thy strength might now be mine!”
I thrust my lance into its side, and then the beast began to writhe.
I heard the song of ages gone, of peoples fled and nations won.
A temple here for where it fell, we’d build upon the ocean swell.
Then the dismal clouds did burst, and beams of light then smote the earth.
The creature reared. Its laughter trilled in wicked tones that haunt me still.
It dove beneath the crimson foam and left me on the sea alone.
I drifted on the heartless tide�"the frontier where my father died.