In B.V.I. Time Poem by Jacob Bearer

The captain's wooden bedroom door
with horizontal slates peeking down
latches fast to the fiberglass
by a silver hook fished through a silver eye
like a steel spotted damsel
tucked in a living crag
holding fast the reef against the surge,
the tide below the tide submerged
in shadowed blues - waves
through a shrunken minnow school
shimmering like torn sheets of foil
wreathed ‘round the rock layered black
and jag rooted 10 fathoms low
in sparks white and peppered tan
posed naked ‘cross the ocean bed
with purpled fans waving cool the depths
like the cockpit window flats
rising and falling
in the late Christmas winds
that snake through the checkered table cloth
anchored by four plates of sesame chicken salad
with dew tracing lines down my cocktail glass
with a squall dropping grey beads in sheets
East of this meal with vessels speckled in Norman's Bight
latched to bobbing white lined pills that sway
to the captain's wood bedroom door
whose lock ticks and clicks
to the valleys and slow rolling peaks
that cup the Drumbeat in its glistening palm.