RAISING THE HUNLEY

They’ve rigged a cage to lift and hold the flimsy thing, cradled
in ratchet-straps and swaying as it breaks water, rusted, barnacled. 
The camera cuts now and then to men and women in jump-suits working,

others toasting, still more in tears. It’s so much smaller than I imagined,
so I can’t help but think of its final crew hunched over hand cranks, 
blind with sweat in the cramped chamber, tired, dying.

And all around smiling crowds halloo the remorseless lump,
barely recognizable coming out of the waves. I get it,
why we were so happy. I was nine, my only thoughts

what treasures might be locked inside, or what the boats looked like.
I think now how silly it is, this raising of the three-times-failed 
submarine that miscarried more often than any blowing-out-of-the-water 

of the enemy was worth; and its final paraded homecoming, ironic,
as just beneath the rusted iron old bones pitch and break, trapped in dark.