An Ordinary Day - 1348

An ordinary day:
No portentous thunderstorms
attend the coming of an ordinary ship
into a normal harbour.
Upon the ship, among the ordinary barrels,
jars and boxes, secreted
in their sly but ordinary way
the small, unpaying passengers
that carry, in their smooth black fur
yet smaller, ordinary fleas
who in their turn bear microscopic guests:
not quite so ordinary.
A sailor bends to lift a bale of cloth
and, cursing, staggers with it to the dock.
He lowers it, and rests.
Glad to be unburdened of its weight
he smiles, wipes his brow
and stoops to scratch an itch upon his leg.
An ordinary man,
already passing into history.