Night Ferry
By Peter Sacks
Blood-drop, lung of fire setting past
the sea bell and wave; why am I separate
from that giant burrowing into further life?
The body breathes and rides
a heavy-netted ocean swollen
by the tide. Under the half-moon
it’s the lighthouse light that turns
the rest of me to early nightfall,
headland, home. I send it back,
a mirrored flickering across cold waters.
We allow ourselves the crest that breaks
above the surface then re-forms.
We make it human and we call it love.
This wintering is my own and not the world’s,
although the world is wintering.
Copyright Credit: Peter Sacks, "Night Ferry" from Natal Command. Copyright © 1997 by The University of Chicago. Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
Source: Natal Command (The University of Chicago Press, 1997)