Sperm Oil

Housed in a boom of blubber

& bone, harpooned six times,

the giant grew into a dynamo

hitched to six taut rope-lines

skipping the boat across waves

toward the blurry lighthouse.

It bled out a long silence

but men in oilskins labored

with hydraulics of light

on water, walked its flank,

& tore it down to a storeroom

of Nantucket scrimshaw.

Ballast stone or sledge?

They bashed in the skull

& lowered down the boy

to haul up buckets of oil

for candles that burned

a slow, clean, white glow.

At ten, he was almost a man

whose feet sank into the waxy

muck of ambergris. His sweat

dripped into a long hour.

Big as a barrel, the head

echoed a temple nave.