Our ship at midnight slides
under timeless constellations.
Low Anguilla drifts by,
beaded shore lights snaking.
The kraken in the hold coughs,
shivering through the decks,
as we lift and dip, a lever poised
on the fulcrum of a wave.
Out there: Venus bright and fixed,
pinned on a mountain of blackness.
. *
Dreams of pale ghost ships,
ghoul-handed and sail-flayed;
abandoned rigs, derricks
pointing at random
like moonstruck lookouts,
frozen in perplexion.
. *
Mid-afternoon a whale occurs
spouting westwards into
the dazzle-path of sunlight.
White nimbus and pin-tailed
frigate birds climb the sky
then drop with each tilt and ease.
. *
In the yardarm heat
you saw a human
falling, naked and pink
through a waste of clouds
grasping at wisps
tumbling out of nothing
into nothing.
