This from Southwest Review, fall 2012.

Reckoning

for Tom Bell

Time, a star, sextant, and chart will fix

your place on the ocean’s shifting page

while its transitive grammar slips unread

past hull and spars—the run-on syntax

of currents and winds, the tidal motifs

and punctuation of reefs and lee shores.

Sight the sun at noon and note the degree

of its height at the moment of its fall. 

Reckon your place, mark X on the chart, 

and there you are. Now plot your course

to virgin beaches you’ll never reach.

Turn from the wind, trim the blank sail,

watch it fill with the log of your voyage,

which will only reveal where you have been.