Poetry. The striking poems from THE LAND BEFORE US have grown out of the author's experience living aboard two different ships. "I should have bargained more, / held the line / but I just wanted a straw hat / and don't like to haggle." / Still, this morning / patching a sail / under the hard sun of Baja, / you were worth every peso. / I keep a sail needle / stuck raggedly through your brim; / soon you will be the battered, / worn hat of my imagining"-from THE LAND BEFORE US.