The Galleons by Rick Barot

The Galleons

 

The galleons want to go to the opera

because they want to hear emotions as big as their emotions.

 

When the spurned lover sings

his booming aria, they think of the oceans that cover

 

the world almost completely.

When the young maid sings her way

 

to being the queen of a kingdom,

they think of the months-long journeys that will pick off

 

their crews one by one, in terrifying

weather followed by boredom. And then the galleons want

 

to shop in the mall in the suburbs.

Everything they see there is like the secrets

 

they once carried in their holds.

Racks of blouses like sacks of gold, tiers of blenders

 

like crates of silver. The food courts

remind them of their full bellies before the trips home,

 

the weight in the center of the body

after it has eaten everything, the stomach glossy and pink

 

as a shopping bag. And then the galleons

want to visit the boy who loves making model boats

 

in the basement that his parents have given up

to his hobby. Wearing a magnifying

 

visor, at a table with glues and tweezers and exact

bits of wood, the boy puts together long ships

 

and carracks in exquisite minute scale.

The galleons approve of the galleon he has been making

 

for months, imagining the huge tonnage

of the actual ships, their cannons arrayed on the sides

 

like judges. And then the galleons, on certain

other days, want to go back to the forests

 

they came from, to reel the blood-soaked narrative

back to the stands of pines and oaks

 

that will become their keels and decking,

hulls and masts. Back to the mountains being mountains,

 

their iron in the ground like gray thoughts.

Back to the birds being birds.

 

Back to the lakes being lakes, deeply shining,

like the black velvet gloves of a prince in an old painting.