“At 4 a.m. the Cook jumped overboard having lain
in the Moon all night he was out of his head.”
—Charles W. Morgan, logbook, July 8, 1846
Drowsy orb, the hue
of dried sea salts,
froths forth the opaque tides
we sail upon, each season passes
unheeded on the sea:
our years brim with tooth
and bone polished
to a sheen like flecks
of reflected light
set in iridescent nebulae,
or a gloss of whale oil gleamed
over crested currents
when morning looms—
a sextant useless, I study
this emerald celestial swirl
hissing in the Arctic
firmament, a luminous
crackling glint above— alone
on deck, I stand under a sky
shucked open
into plums, indigos, mottled tar
dark, yet white capped
and milk spilled: distant, spherical,
storytelling—
among constellations I seek
a whale’s eye, a blowhole,
starry water droplets
from a fancied surfaced fluke,
abalone imaginings in my aubade,
this aurora, where the moon’s
a pearl, a stone,
some slick oyster, maybe.
