Night Watch

Midnight sun somewhere in the North Atlantic aboard S/V Teddy; June 2023

I am drinking salt water in my mind—

Slipping deeper and into the darkness;

Through the caustic surface above,

I glimpse the aberration of my ship.

What is gone is a ghost,

What passes a memory;

And still I plunge deeper

Until all is black around me.

I feel the mink brush against my calves,

And the rays glide by in silent reverie,

Returning to the safety of the reef;

Committing me to my Orphic fate.

The simplicity and silence haunts me—

My shipmates will awake in several hours,

Drifting forty degrees off course.

And their hearts will sink when they find the deck empty.

They will know that I am gone.

A relic, dissolved in the sea.

My stories lost forever,

My fears buried with me.

I open my eyes, feel the gentle heeling of our hull,

The foam breaking beneath her quarters,

The sea spray on my cheeks.

I adjust course five points west;

And embrace the solemn nighttide.