and there is that Leviathan

By Erin Clark

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There go the ships, at least
the ones not proving too elderly to sail
or getting stuck in the Panama Canal. There go
the ships, container-laden, or passenger’ed,
the stout car-ferries that zig-zag across
glacial slopes awash in tourists, waves.
There go the ships: crabbers, lobsterers,
harvesters of tuna by the billion.
There go the ships bedecked with naval
hubris, above the surface and below. There
go the ships, yachting-gleaming;
there too go the Canadian canoes.
I’ve missed a few. There’s always more,
a coracle with a rough oar, a catamaran.
There go the ships:
and there is that leviathan.

* Psalm 104:26
there go the ships
and there is that Leviathan
which Thou hast made to play
[in the great and wide sea]

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Erin Clark (she/her) is an American writer & priest living in London. Her work has appeared in publications in the US, UK and Canada, including The Selkie, the Oxonian Review, the New Critique, Free Verse Revolution, The Primer, Over/Exposed, the Crank, Geez, About Place and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook ​Whom Sea Left Behind will be out in 2023 (Alien Buddha Press). You can find her online at emclark.co or on Twitter @e_m_clark.

Erin's other work on Foreshadow:
Found poem: upon arrival at the Abbey (Poetry, July 2023)
​Orchard labyrinth, overgrown (Poetry, August 2023)