A ship
crosses the ocean,
in the darkness:
darkness, black & endless
no moon,
no stars,
just clouds -- thick & low
clouds that can't be seen
The ship has lights,
but those lights know
an event horizon
Lights sometime
glint against the waves,
those roiling & undulating
waves,
and the lights bounce off
the ship's hull
But no one can see them,
because if anyone could see them,
the seers would be seen--
unless theirs is a ghost ship,
piloted by literal ghosts,
or some other agent of observation
Maybe there is fog --
not enveloping the ship,
(such mist would be felt
on the skin of those on deck)
but, rather, a fog between
where the ship is,
and where is should be
For it is surely off course,
listlessly drifting,
all hope arrayed against edges:
edges of ice
&
edges of the world
Not that the world is flat,
but, perhaps, it's not fully sculpted:
maybe nothing lies outside
the range of the seen:
outside the bounds of experience
It sounds crazy,
but all kinds of crazy
form in a mind
submerged in darkness
The spastic flame that dances fast:
too weird to match to drum.
The teary eye strays into trance
as if deadened by rum.
Where will the flame transport us now
that smoke has made us cry?
Where will the cracking sounds take us
as we turn to the sky?
The moon is out and casts a glow,
a glow of milky white.
And each dim point of starlight burns
trillions of times as bright
as that feeble, little campfire
that rules what I now feel:
the heat, the smoke, the popping sounds
that now make my head reel.
Stepping out onto a city street
in the cool, unclocked hours
of the morning.
One looks about,
but not as one does in daylight --
i.e. in response to sound.
Instead, one looks about
in response to the lack of sound.
A clawing sound
from a burrowing rat
isn't worth one's attention.
It's the silence
that calls upon the mind
as to a sailor on shore leave.
Flipping open the tent flap, I see a vast and glowing night sky. It's not the shabby patch of light points of my sky at home. Here, high in the mountains, far from any city, I can make out bands of color and dazzling webs of luminosity.
And I can feel the tininess that past men must have felt, a diminished sense of importance that's hard to come by for a human standing on the Earth, where flags are planted everywhere and grand monuments to our pomposity are packed into dense clusters.
mountain sky.
the cloudless night
glows infinite
I saw a silhouette in the moonlight,
a man who plodded snow that glowed moonlight.
I was mesmerized by the vagabond --
a night-owl nomad moving by moonlight.
What'd take me out into that night's cruel cold,
seeing only what shone in the moonlight?
A deadly urgent case must be afoot,
a riddle solved solely in harsh moonlight.
But maybe there's no beauty like the moon,
and maybe no light flatters like moonlight.
If so, the cold must be some puny stakes
against the milky glow of brisk moonlight.
And so I pull on boots and tug a hat
to venture out amongst the pale moonlight.
And seeing night as did that wanderer,
I know the virtue life finds in moonlight.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 