Despite the dreams and yearnings that lie drowned,
the flotsam of desire, the fearful straits,
the capsized hope, the passion gone aground,
the tides too treacherous to navigate,
you lift your gaze each time love reappears
like an ocean liner gliding through the dark,
without a thought you rush down to the pier
and climb aboard and once again embark,
and stand upon the deck ablaze with light,
and raise your glass beneath the glittering stars,
and watch the harbor slowly fade from sight,
not caring where you’re going, or how far —
knowing the odds are slim that you’ll survive,
yet never having felt quite so alive.

*****

Marion Shore writes: “Embarking is a riff on Petrarch’s sonnet Passa la nave mia colma d’oblio (Canzoniere 189), contrasting the festive departure of the ocean liner into the unknown, with the inevitable shipwreck of Petrarch’s beleaguered vessel. You could say “Embarking“ is sort of a prequel to Petrarch’s poem–with a hint of Titanic thrown in.”

Marion Shore is the author of For Love of Laura: Poetry of Petrarch, a collecion of Petrarch’s poetry in translation published by the University of Arkansas Press in 1987. Her work has also appeared in Poems from Italy; Petrarch in English; 150 Contemporary Sonnets; and Rhyming Poems: A Contemporary Anthology. Her poems and translations have been published in numerous journals including The Formalist, Light Quarterly, Iambs and Trochees, First Things, and Measure. Recipient of the 2010 Richard Wilbur Award for Sand Castle (from which this poem is taken) and two-time winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, she lives in Springfield, MA.

Photo: “Berlin Cruise liner docked at Waterford” by mike65ie is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.