Setting Course

She is setting up her garage sale, 

telling me her life story 

as a series of whitecaps,

no, no, another no, 

hope churned 

to nope. 

And I see her weathervane, copper:, 

a desktop model with a ship on top, 

its course set everywhere 

like dark tattoos, 

floating skeleton masts

of her arms in the sailing wake of the sun.

“Throw us up, cancer, call us,” 

she says, her clouds spinning, 

offering herself like goods 

flung to the winds. I’m thinking 

of waves and pulleys, leaning 

toward a trip, with nuts and bolts 

rigging the journey. “I want to go,” 

she howls, wearing her lamb’s wool 

in the breeze—an Icelandic fisherwoman, 

seaworthy,

pivoting toward me

into the current.