OTI:one poem and notes:6/19/16

Open To Interpretation

From The Mast Head

From the mast head
The lookout sights a craft,
Long, slender,
Once many oared
But now adrift
With a solitary oarsman
Under the shade of a bamboo and paper umbrella.
The Black Ship warps aside.
The umbrella lowers,
And an inquisitive friendly face
With eyes squinting off into space--
Blind.
"Ichi!" Dulcinea exclaims.
Brought aboard,
Ichi is invited to Dulcinea's cabin.
"Ichi! Your craft?" Ishmael inquires,
"Oh!  It will find its own way to Hawaii!" Ichi smiles.

From the masthead
The lookout sights
A bulge in the ocean's surface
From something submerged
Rapidly approaching.
And a second bulge not far behind
Chasing.
With a roar from under the Black Ship's bow
A Black Dragon surfaces,
Takes wing,
And in a moment gone.
The pursuer nowhere to be seen.
"Lower the sails." Ichi suggests.
For thirty days and nights
The Black Ship drifts
As Ichi listens to some strange creature
Beneath the Black Ship's keel.
"Ready yourselves!" Ichi calls out.
A tarnished bronze craft with rows of rusted iron scales and horns, and two bulging 'eyes'
Surfaces aside the Black Ship.
The crew at the railings in wonderment.
"I know the craft" Ned Land speaks up, "having been aboard her of late.  The dead and the wounded you pulled from the blood slick sea my shipmates, part of her crew. 
Nautilus she's known by,
Nemo's craft. 
Mobiles n mobili."

From the masthead
The lookout watched
The wounded of the Nautilus crew,
Now recovered, return.
"Wait!"  Ishmael calls to the last to depart, "we're shorthanded,
And you have the look of one who has traveled much. 
What be you name?"
"Dana, Richard Henry Dana."
Ismael says,
"You're with us."

From the masthead
The lookout can't make out
What Queequeg is about
Guarding a lump under a
Tarpaulin on the Black Deck
With his harpoon.
"Give it a poke, Queequeg." Ishmael suggests.
"Hey!" A tall bookish looking fellow jumps out from under the tarpaulin.
"I was reading..."
The Black Deck pearlescing where
The tarp shaded it, fading in the sunlight.
"And who might you be called?" Ishmael asks.
"Melville, Herman Melville."
Queequeg sets the tip of his harpoon
Against Melville's cheek.
Ishmael smiles,
"A tattoo for Herman, a small one,
A whale. 
He can read the Black Deck tales."

DolphinWords

Notes: "you have the look of one who has traveled much" is stolen from the Mists of Pandaria in World of Warcraft...dragons that both swim and fly too, from wow...Ichi stolen from the Japanese samurai movies...his craft from Hokusai The Great Wave...a curio...out of all the fictional characters available, only a few seem to fit on the Black Ship...and no real today sorts at all!...I need to find out if 'pearlescing' is a word...brb...yep...a kind of glaze for glassware and such...success!...I got to ref six big kids games (prep varsity) in summer tournament...this like after over twenty years of wonderment!...there wasn't even a court in the Valley, so the effort was sidetracked, begun as it were doing middle school and kid games when I lived in Rainbow/Temecula...effort picked up again three falls back when I came back to Town...two of the games were really big kids, like state champions level...someone likely having some fun with me to put me on the floor with such, but I got through it...when one coach finally went off on me for my no calls...I'm notorious for no calls...I put an arm around him and let him rave...and had to do the same to the other coach, who objected to my not calling a technical foul on the first...with arm around him, I explained we, the refs, had been advised not to T coaches, and so keep peace in the tournament...I'm actually very good at talking coaches down...which is a good thing to have, as I'm very good at getting them excited about my no calls!...the 'from the mast head' intros to each of these reminds me of inbounding the basketball...kind of neat trick I'll add to my bag of tricks!...oh, the 'bulge' in the water isn't from, but so closely coincided with it may as well be, the hippopotamus chasing a boat in an iphone add...hippo surfaces...'taken with an iphone' or some such...I can find that...brb....iphone 'shot on an iphone campaign'...another way to inbound the ball!

:)

DavidDavid