When sailors crossed the oceans
their gums bled and their teeth
grew as loose as screen doors
in the wind. They ate old biscuits
and salted meats and bruises
appeared like stains over
their bodies and then they began
unhealing: the arm they broke
as a child when they fell from
a tree unmended and the gash
in their knee when they were thrown
from a horse reopened. All the old
wounds were new, as if
time had undone itself, as if
each injury is permanent,
just waiting to show itself again.
It was worse the second time,
not having fallen from a tree
or horse, but suffering anyway,
in the middle of the ocean, where,
for weeks, no land was visible.
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