The Transmigration of Souls
Inside the starboard window
of his room in a boat at sea,
the piece of earth he's scraped from a dead gull’ s leg
sprouts eighty different species, green
under bell glass. By the sunlight
of the oil lamp he makes rain
as the wind picks up toward Chiloe,
Port Famine, Concepcion, and then Galapagos.
Here he finds shipwrecked sailors’ epitaphs cut