Moby Dick Read in Winter, Only in Winter

My medicine tastes like strawberry.

Tastes like “let’s get married.”

Tastes like out-of-season, lonely.

Like, come find me.

And—Vitamin D.

Spoonsful of cubicles

Of work from home and dislocated mandibles

and, also, manatees.

Laid back on their backs, moaning.

A black hole, singing.

Whale sounds, blaring.

Through an American high school’s hallway’s intercom, empty.

Speaking to their babes and babies, telling

stories of migration and maturation.

Their medicine (I imagine) tastes like

salt water and sunlight

found only in the severity of a long life—

Experienced in the short time of daytime of fall time,

Of wintertime—and in time, my medicine will taste like

homemade rhubarb pie and an early morning

sailor’s nighttime nightmare, summertime sunrise.