Vermeer

By Debora Greger b. 1949 Debora Greger

Every seaworthy vessel a woman

whose mate, eloquent of how she handled

under the worst of weathers, hailed his goddess

of wet fire, handmaid and dockside whore.

Over the courtyard’s dry dock, linens snapped.

Brisk was the wind that claimed divine right

to salvage whatever tore loose,

brisk at the docks the trade

in foreign plumage, and the milliner,

arms full of wings, who tripped in a puddle

that brimmed with sky. Past the known world,

past the map that decorated a room

with scalloped waters where ships the size

of fingernail parings were never snagged

by the dragon-sharp islands,

a keel of leaf scraped across a pane.

A branch scratched endearments on the air

it then brushed clean as sand.

Had the woman rereading a letter

looked to the window casting her light,

she could have seen almost to land’s end,

the salt sea broken into semaphore

flashing its glassy code for tears

back to shore, seen almost to the cage on deck,

the pigeons gray as the mind,

some to bear messages home the first days out,

the rest to fatten in the hold.

Source: Off-Season at the Edge of the World: Poems (1994)

Biography

Poet and artist Debora Greger earned her BA from the University of Washington and her MFA from the University of Iowa. She has published numerous books of poetry, including Men, Women, and Ghosts (2008), and her work has been included in issues of Best American Poetry. As a reviewer for Publishers Weekly observed, Greger “rarely rejoices, though she can surely console; her pruned-back, autumnal sensibility and her balanced lines . . .

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