Make Light

Up over the Atlantic, my mind is blowing bubbles, and the wind is licking, out for trouble, and whitecaps—only caps to ever be—have turned the water marble hardened too early. But what the light has really caught on is a smooth-sided rider, and I can see the captain with his napkin there beside him. He is tired of the satellites and of the tin-can dinners, but the stories make him glimmer like a little shoe for me. We’re all shaking just to catch the light, but we really wish that we could make it with our eyes. We’re all shaking just to catch the light, but we really wish that we could make it inside. You’re waiting on the doorstep of my well-fed imagination, or was it that you’re at the station? Let me take my time and get the colors right, after all my eyes are ringing with the fanciness of flight, and what I’m really needing is a sure-footed rider who will meet my traitors who go clanging in the night and wag their fingers at my undeveloped blisters and at the way I ball my fist up for all the world to see. Gracie, tell your mother she was right about freedom (that it’s the only kingdom anybody seeks). But I saw a buck with branches tangled in his antlers and I could not help from looking on that desperate dancer and his soul was nearly taken in the struggle to be free but he saw my eyes on him and he spared a shot for me.