Dream.

SHIP-MODEL KIT

The lid of its box had a colorful picture

of a four-masted clipper unzipping

a blue ocean that had been loosely

laid out, its folds rolling, its opened

lapels showing a foamy white lining,

far more color right there on that flat

cardboard carton than on the millions

of pieces inside, all the same gray

like lead soldiers, and all fastened

together, tab to tab, plastic cast

as one piece, much like the long folds

of dolls that my Grandmother Kooser

snipped out of the Ames Daily Tribune

just to entertain me and my sister,

though all that had happened before

I’d grown older and ready to take on

an expensive, elaborate ship-model

kit with an accordion-fold of thin

paper instructions, hundreds of words

I had almost no patience for reading,

wanting to start where I wanted to

start, gluing together the few pieces

I recognized, laying the miniature

oars over the laps of the lifeboats,

etc., but this time I made myself

follow directions, having made wastes

of other such kits—fighter planes,

locomotives and cars—and I laid it

all out in my room on a card-table,

the halves of the hull, all the sails,

full, quarter and jib, like seashells,

all of the miscellaneous pieces

that a ship had to have to be real,

right down to the thin little ladders

of rigging to climb to the yardarms,

there to sit, keeping my balance

despite a stiff breeze, looking out

over the sea of my room, the night

with its crickets like ropes and spars

creaking below my screen window,

the waves I could feel going slack

at their edges, the faraway harbors

with their busy bazaars going quiet,

the salty nets drawn up and drying,

their glass floats like small bubbles

in the night’s iridescence, as I bent

squinting over the bits of that ship

I was building to dream me away.

Ted Kooser