- White mass passes to starboard
- grazing our hull,
- but there is no rending of steel
- and we do not sink from the sky.
- The mass is benign, insubstantial,
- water not frozen but inflated,
- a jovial mountain of fluff.
- Confident, tested, we sail straight
- through another, dead ahead,
- and are hurled about the cabin
- by its fierce internal forces.
- .
- NOW HEAR THIS—
- The pummeling was for impertinence,
- for condescending assumptions
- and criminal innocence.
- Know your selves to be guests,
- here at our sufferance and subject
- to removal, surrounded, outnumbered.
- Guard down, you will be judged unworthy
- to stand the posts that are your lives.
- Alert to every possibility, placing
- each foot, each wing just so, you may
- be permitted to pass through our territory—
- land, water and sky—all of this that is ours—
- with only minor scrapes and bruises,
- Your attention is required, and respect.
- If you choose instead arrogance, not to worry.
- Replacements are ever arriving.
