Night At Sea

sailing

  

Night At Sea

Night approaches starboard from the east
porous and liquid as the sea below
they merge embraced like engaging lovers
swaying gently in their exchange of rapture

The thrust of the boat
carves white slits into the wave-veins
they bleed through the heart of the water
vessel upon vessel

The world looking neither flat nor round
but ‘catacombed’ in between
the chemical flux of hydrogen and oxygen and
I, mere mortal, lost in the balance
at the mercy of esoteric nature
on a sea-faring man made invention

Watching the world through a veil
of hazy ink blotting up time and destination
Galileos’s stars the only lucid oracle
mesmerized by the cradled rhythm
from the parting labial waters 
I close my eyes as the engine chants
a droning diesel mantra

Salinity aerates through the resolute wind 
my skin glistens like that of a neophytes
wet and thick with the juices of rebirth
bonding me to our great Matriarch
and gravity, the physical umbilicus
chains my body while
all vagary of thought ruffles leeward

How grand it is to feast
upon this epicurean night
tacking along an aqueous avenue
turning a blind eye to convention
fed by the unfurling of winds,
Mariner of this liquid cosmos
sovereign at the helm of Neptune’s meridians…
                                                                     Abbe A