Art and Craft

Who’d create a crippled craft,
With a little fore and a little aft
Built with bricks a shapely boat
Mortar-moored where it cannot float?

A landlocked hard ship, run ashore
Not intended to perform
Stem and starboard, merely sculptural
Scuppers, stern, all for nautical

But do not pity this city ship--
Made to please the ones that slip
And eddy in human ebb and flow;
More art than craft this little boat.

Over the gunwale they climb midship
Ported away with minds adrift,
Celebrate its street-side nestle,

And give way to the privileged vessel.