INDEPENDENCE DAY

6 9 R I N D E P E N D E N C E D A Y E R N E S T H I L B E R T We wait for fireworks that never arrive. The halfhearted breeze blows humidly Around us on the beached old tug named Thor. Before us dock the speedboat I’m Alive, Skipjack Ida May, the trawler Big Sea. The line between sea and land that makes the shore Grows harder to see in the dusk. We Watch the sore sun slip from bold orb to tiger Stripe at the horizon with blue cloud rags Dragged in the storm’s wake. We talk, agree The fireworks display might come soon, figure We only need to wait a while more to see. We lean back, and the cool coarse wood Feels good, stare up at what’s left of the day, And then full dark, and, after half an hour, When we know they will not come, that we could Go if we wanted, for some reason we stay There with Miss May, Old Joy, Lady Flower, Olympia, Lazee, One Love, Osprey. When we look away from the hollow Dark above down to the darker harbor And all the quivered light along the quay, We see the black itself as a berth for the glow Of masthead and stern lights on sloop and cutter, Ketch and schooner, safe after the storm, dividing Darkness, as if dreaming what seemed about 7 0 Y To happen, hulls of Isabel, Edna, Ain’t It Grand, Side by side in the indistinct tide, guiding Bright quick ripples of surviving light that bear out To meet us where we still wait on darkened land. ...