Keel and Beam

Backward Mutters Poetry Podcast · Jul 30, 2026 · 3m · transcript

Today’s poem is a sonnet which I wrote during Easter week. The words ‘keel and beam’ were likely in my head because I’d been looking at the spine titles of my incomplete collection of Aubrey Maturin novels by Patrick O’Brian. They stood (and still do stand) quietly judging me from their place on the bookshelf, but that’s another story.

The poem itself was one of the “downloaded” sort. By that I mean I received and wrote it with little (and possibly too little) editing. Do you know those sorts of endeavors? They are not so much an act of the will as a receptivity to a moment.

That the church…