LIFE FOR THE CAPTAIN’S STEWARD

 4 AM, she knows it’s time to eat,

 her first meal of the day.

She woke me out of my near sleep state

to make sure I knew it too.

On mornings like this

I always find myself awake,

as she falls back into her bed,

fed and satiated for another few hours.

I find myself cigarette and coffee in hand

outside taking the measure of the barren sea chop

bathing in the bright silvery glow of a moon

which was on the other side of the sky last I saw it.

Silence punctured briefly

by the suck me to the rocks

Siren’s wail swiftly choked off.

A switch flipped creating an

abrupt silent wave washing over

my burning butt again.

The mist of my breath in the chill air rises straight and true,

safely on course to the cloudless sky. Illuminated in bright silver

as if there was worth found in that exchange of light and fumes.

The thoughts fall faster from the sky

than I can breathe them in

or pick them up

for I wonder at nothing anymore.

It all is as it is

and in that there is only sad uniqueness

of the sameness in days that roll on

in this never ending cycle of food,

cigarettes, coffee, half sleep

and eerie quiet sporadically broken into measures

of the night time and its silent music

prodded, wailing into ringing the quiet into my ears. 

In these moments of peculiar solitude

I want to do a standing press of the world,

lift it, hold it higher,

make it better for all of the beings upon it,

but I am on the wrong side of life to lift it

and have not that kind of strength anymore.

I am worn, rounded, and translucent as the sea glass

that heeded those sirens call once.

Once is all it takes to get broken

upon the rocks in this barren place

where mortality meets infinity.

One absent minded moment

sets course towards the night song

when the day watch

helmsman should be sleeping

rather than dark thought stewarding.

The only truth to be found

on a morning like this is

if the cap’n doesn’t get her food

she won’t go back to her bunk

and sleep a while longer,

her dogged hunger will trail my wake

until I obey,

and I will still be awake,

far away from the void

of dreamlessness and peace.

© M Durfee

1/8/12