'Stereotypical moon, you swing
      a low first quarter up
      above the house, you are
      a thumbnail cutting. Let
      inebriate dockers, round the flat canal
      find their folktale cheese'

As if they always were,
those squared-off barges launched on static seas
a world beyond this frame. You watch
the clasped-in dreamers entering their scenes,
and all their wrangled limbs in packet beds
are glanced across by you,
their burdens and their breathing spin these tales
from where their islands lie.
...