Rerunning Nighttime Maritime Weather Report

two dogs on his lap
to stroke, to stroke,
general synopsis
at midnight, he struck
one as the clock
struck one,
not yet stricken
with sleep, low fair isle
996 moving slowly southeast

no usual window-pelt
of rain to progress
the night, only aired
tide, weather or not
losing its identity
keeps keeping him,
too fluid too, from sleep

he reads and listens,
a page to turn, he 
turns, new low expected
german bight 985
by midnight tonight,
for one reading
too often, left to right,
time writes backward
from 3:15 till 8:45,
synopsis at midnight,
the long night ticking
into the past, moving slowly

southeast, filling slightly,
listening, listening
to the lull of the sea, 
not wave, but language
of wave, foreign
tongue of current and gale,
unspoken, not saying
though speaking, occurring
or not, the stroke on the rock
regardless, southeast
becoming cyclonic, timeless
as the hour not ticking

in the lamplight, in
the moonlight, or northwest
5 or 6, in the starlight, the fade,
perhaps gale 8 later,
as each stroke, veering, slows,
lulled by viking north utshire
south utshire, bearing sleep,
drone of night, and

a dog's wither wither
as it circles and circles
its tail around itself,
the sun moves backward,
decreasing southeast forties
on the other side, the hands
of the clock in his lap

the day changes, the wait
changes, losing the very change
waited for, he changes

into southeast forties,
time for fishermen and sailors,
but he, still awake, recedes
as they set sail for severe gale 9

awake, he sailed with sailors
east southeast, sea-crossing
for the retrograde,
and each crossed, fair
or poor, one
by one, and sailed
home half asleep

Published under the name Jeanette Karhi in Poetry Salzburg Review, Autumn 2005, No. 8