Under a Shipwrecked Moon

I am asleep when the first mast snaps with a thunderclap!
A cracking that shakes the skeleton, all bodies bolting upright
Sight suddenly blinded by flashes of lightening speed dancing
Through the portals, calling every detail in the cabin to attention
Until the entire luminous design slowly dissolves, in one piece,
Back to blackness, that sweet blackness, the comfort and terror
Of the Great Mother Sea.

And now, the rushing ? The rushing sounds! I am climbing out the hatch
Onto starboard, there! Two mates screaming, dangling on the grab-rails
Flapping in the squall like shredded sheets, lightening forcing all detail to freeze!
And then, dissolve back to sweet blackness.

We see everything, our faces frozen with astonishment...fifty-foot rollers
Crashing through the gunwhales, flooding the hatches. Now: radio down.
Three men overboard, the dinghies adrift. The hull is bilged.
The vessel flounders and now, finally: capsized.

The terrible sights and sounds of angels, everywhere angels!
Their massive wings battered down by these gails of hell
Swallowed inside the belly of an ungodly tempest.
The lightening bolts! The thunderclaps!

The silence.

The silence, my love, the silence...



-Antero Alli