purple veins dark wash
asleep against a lightning cloud
it’s soft like forearm hair against my temple
it’s pillowy like flesh of fingers plum against the back of my neck
it’s a dark grey gauzy wadded up across the sky on the other side of of the airplane’s cubbyhole windows
the lightning strikes my dreaming
but my joints are young enough to spring
the gutters of my tendons creak
like a ship’s mast
strung with the wind and rope
and thick canvas
that catches the blue flash of electric’s
lingering luminescent dye
the sea is my brow
twistknot—flat—lined—lifting
the seamen are my eyes
and are all of our eyes
on the far side of the storm edge
dusk keeps not quite going out
we pursue the sinking iron
red with its own shaping
into the water steam the surge of midnight blue
pinned above the clouds
the scattered white embers of city lights
the wingtip flashing
the lightning that tears the grey in half
the sailors’ eyes
offshore straining
