POEMS/ Meditation on a Boad of Arrows

Meditation on a Boat of Arrows
I still feel the pain of that ancient
straw boat pierced with three thousand
sharp arrows I once saw flying
suspended above me in a museum,
its last sea sailed, its journeys done,
final battle fought, held aloft
but ever doomed by art
to endless suffering,
no hope of homecoming,
no victory within its grasp,
no chance of floating free,
its image tale of a Chinese general’s
trickery, how he faked an attack
to lure his enemy to discharge
all their arrows to refill his
own empty quivers, how he
risked pain for gain, high price
I too would pay to refit my compass
for ventures still to come,
but I am no general, no magician,
have no power to relaunch a ship
without a keel, undone by the loss
of one who sailed with me
through seas rough and smooth,
unsure now of the way home.
©Phyllis Beck Katz
I still feel the pain of that ancient
straw boat pierced with three thousand
sharp arrows I once saw flying
suspended above me in a museum,
its last sea sailed, its journeys done,
final battle fought, held aloft
but ever doomed by art
to endless suffering,
no hope of homecoming,
no victory within its grasp,
no chance of floating free,
its image tale of a Chinese general’s
trickery, how he faked an attack
to lure his enemy to discharge
all their arrows to refill his
own empty quivers, how he
risked pain for gain, high price
I too would pay to refit my compass
for ventures still to come,
but I am no general, no magician,
have no power to relaunch a ship
without a keel, undone by the loss
of one who sailed with me
through seas rough and smooth,
unsure now of the way home.
©Phyllis Beck Katz