From BAMBOO RIDGE Issue Number 52, Fall 1991, Last Quarter

Here's Meredith Carson's “Shipwrecks”

The sea floor is spread surreal
when ships sink,
pressing the floor with the weight of their hulls
and their objects
which the sea cannot understand and so
covers with things it knows —
barnacles, seaweeds, crusts of bryozoa,
ooze and sand.

Subterfuge.

Marvellous for hiding, inventive,
whisper-soft, tentacular,
and deeper-darker.

Yet there are whose who dive
wanting this mismatch as tabloid treasure.
They vacuum off the sand and
diagnose the privacies of rust,
lift it to the air and weigh it.

The sea would cradle it in silence.