The Voyage

Candle lit in the hold, insecure on the boards,
I’ve forgotten why I undertook this voyage.
As the ship rocks, shadows flow over
embedded mosses, pockmarks riddle
the walls, waver into faces. No!

I don’t want to be here. The weather is water
and doesn’t belong to me, the candle
smudges smoke to corners.
I miss the feel of land, the leaf-lit streets
of autumn, the hill that loved my bicycle,
let down its spine so long, so lovely, so kind;
the wind, the trailing sun, the small work
of building snow-cities in hedges, their roofs
powder under my swept mitten—

Could I return? To hedge-light, paw print,
ant and leaf, to the shook leaves on my street,
to the long-loving injury I called life?
I am simpler here at sea, but I might not be well.

This matter can’t be handled calmly in a pharmacy,
blue-lit, red and trembling welcome on its door,
or by a doctor, ether rising from his coat,
the plangent striking of a drill or blade, the dosing
and pungency of alchemic liquids,
the way he sticks the hypodermic deep into my mouth
like a prayer. With all these bottles glowing, none of them,
opened, release me. This is the riddle of the bottle—
the wish evaporates once the cotton is removed.

What knocks against the hull moves loud
to soft, creaks and bangs as if a body
is thrown against a door. Who’s there?
The candle gutters. I trust a sudden flare
to light me in the hold, for someone to see
the child down here, to carry me up from the dark.