Somewhere out of somewhere.

I'd been crashing against rocks.
Rocks that slashed apart the tide, and yet to find you, and your sinking ship,
I'd have drowned before quitting.
The sky was quiet,
too quiet to tell truths of waves that are calling
and falling beneath, through, up the nostrils of a salted feversome slosh, I saw it.
Strewn like a child's playroom, no breathing bobbers, no fearsome men holding onto it's good side. A calm spot,
where none wanted calm. The cotton sail danced in and out, a jive, a taunt, as I swam on, predicting the odds of finding you alive,
as I predicted the likelihood of getting myself close
and then leaving safely later.
The wicked alkaline burn caught me in the eyes and caged them for a moment, or five,
not allowing me to flow with the next maraud of covetous lashings that intended to take me under.
All was quiet on the surface.
Bubbles from froth, or from me, beating across the top as the dance went on as fast as it always had,
a piece of shirt floated up,




up,
and
myself with it, a push unlike other pushes, if only to reach that broken boat, that wonder boat, that next new venture boat that you suggested was a bright idea for your future hopes,
your present daydreams,
that I never admitted
in our conversations
between the heavy work of home
was shared.
Not that I'd have stopped what brought you a joy land simply couldn't.
Not that you'd have a cared a stick that I cared when you had so many dames at your knees.
I kicked my legs one last time and pulled myself up, with arms that thought they could do no more. I'd made it
onto this un-level surface, with a stone straight through the wooden belly,
and I howled, wept, boorishly, like a soldier holding a wounded friend, for that small moment of repose.