Life on a Killer Submarine
by President Jimmy Carter
(published in North Dakota Quarterly, 60:1, 1992)
I had a warm, sequestered feeling
deep beneath the sea,
moving silently, assessing
what we heard from far away
because we ran so quietly ourselves,
walking always in our stocking feet.
We'd often hear the wild sea sounds.
the scratch of shrimp, the bowhead's moan,
the tantalizing songs of humpback whales.
We strained to hear all other things
letting ocean lenses bring to us
the pulse of screws like a heartbeat,
the murmurs of most distant ships,
or submarines that might be there and hunting us.
One time we heard, with perfect clarity,
a vessel's pulse four hundred miles away
and remembered that, in spite of everything
we did to keep our sounds suppressed,
the gradient sea could focus, too, our muffled noise,
could let the other listeners know
where their torpedoes might be aimed.
We wanted them to understand
that we could always hear them first
and, knowing, be inclined to share
our love of solitude, our fear
that one move, threatening or wrong,
could cost the peace we yearned to keep
and kill our hopes that they were thrilled like us
to hear the same whale's song.
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