Mike's boat

is a messy looking thing,
sorta rough, half sailboat half
canoe. He made it himself and it works
beautifully. He floats it down
the Platte, the flat plains
of Wyoming where it points
its nose, decorated pre-Greek goddess
like, toward the eventual Mississippi.

John's yard is full

of boats. There's the little
fiberglass sailboat that floats OK,
floats on the sewage treatment ponds because
there aren't many places to sail a boat
in the desert. But mostly, his yard
is full of a big droopy yacht
he says his father stole it in San Diego
and sailed around the Baja Peninsula
to El Golfo and the Colorado estuary
but how did it get to Tucson?
Anyway, there's a race between
his yacht and his house, which one's
going to fall apart first.

The perfect boat

is all of them together, a flotilla
of sailboats triremes coracles
longboats, manly boats for manly
men, men putting themselves and their boats
together, men and boats slouching
in yards, getting older,
dreaming of the perfect vessel.