Poem 249

A rhapsody and a flight of fancy with shades of Rimbaud’s Le Bateau Ivre – I’m borrowing Jenny Bornholdt’s character Sophie as featured in her first poetry collection This Big Face (thanks Jen!) – just taking her for a spin to see what happens … and what happens is pleasurable lyrical and beautiful, a dream-tale of sailing to and off the end of the world  …

( I could pick any line here, they’re all rich and expressive – but maybe I’ll mention the lighthouse’s electric sting, the knuckle of wind, the half-rhyme of aisles/whales, and the final filmic long-distance image (similar to Poem 134 ) of the planet by night, water as a shining glass globe held by the strands and traceries of archipelagos and continents … )

Sophie’s Ocean

Sophie takes the boat out under cover of a dream
serrated sharks of moonlight circle her
the arm of the bay gropes in the water for her
she goes round and out to sea
out from the lighthouse and its electric sting
it is so late Sophie hears wings above her head
frantically beating inland she knots the boat
to a knuckle of wind and is tugged out
like a kite lying flat between the two faces of dark and black
laid together down avenues of islands
along aisles of whales
she sees phosphorus snakes wriggle down the gutter of every wave
feels the keel rasp over the back of a ray
that flies ghostly ahead and turns
to have its belly done
                                       a tail
like a dark crescent moon on a pillar of stone
curves up slides away
Sophie rocks over its wake
tangled balls of squid roll by
rain flies upward to the surface in a wild hissing of fish
Sophie is going on
blown further by the sea elephant's booming voice
she passes between sleeping eyelids of ice
dreaming nosing up into spring
then into a lumpy turnip soup of ice which stiffens
like white petals to catch her the boat slows
before the arctic mothball weight of white fur
rack after rack of it
but the sea turns down out of the muddled currents
toggled in ice's hard ring springs warm water
the boat sniffs and follows
quicker speed lifting underneath muttering and hurrying
roaring down in white froth and the rumbling of great anchors
and stones 
                    Sophie sees the bulging lip ahead speaking the sea
out into silence the boat gathers into a leap
and bursts forward
spreading its stiff planks
in a creaky beat once
                                       again
                                                 more easily
gaining up steadily toward where the stars turn their glistening fins
Sophie looks back
                                 the ocean
bobs like a glass float
in the dark knot of a net