La Santísima Trinidad

​​The pigweed’s a-winging its way along the shore
On a breeze that blows it by swifter (I swear) than the stream running beneath the floor
My sails are slung like the wet wash
Left on the line in the rain – ‘night before
And if I gotta get out and push her on through, “Cógelo suave” won’t mean much no more

Lone stars and angels can’t shine when the heavens are grey
And my compass thought it’d be funny to point a dozen different directions today
The pecans drank all my water,
My rudder’s fixing to defile the clay
And I just heard that the sky over Palestine fell, with Galveston still miles away

Then one fine morning, from the corner of my eye
I saw the tarp on the deck heave and fall with the breath of some stowed-away critter inside
So I tore back the canvas
And there, hunkered and tattered – I spied:
The leathery squint of a road-hardened rake the world put away wet, and denied

“It’s hotter than a church bell,” or so my new friend decreed
“And when the road gets real, and the tide gets tight, there’s no place that you want to be”
So with forty-two pips between us
And the gulls overhead gargling steam,
My first-mate and I, with old Hannah on high, set a new course for the sea