the bow of the ship

The bow of the ship is sacred on moonless nights.

You stumble up there, drunk with artificial lights,

and sway in the darkness--clinging, staring, blind.

Moment by moment, you are sobered by the black,

until your appetite diminishes. You find

that single photons from long-gone supernovas

are enough to satisfy you. If you look back,

an open porthole seems obscenely bright:

a gluttony.

Best if your voyage takes you far beyond

where city glow demarcates the horizon.

Here nothing separates sky from sea, save

the abrupt absence of stars.

                                          Or not. You see

a luminescent soup, a swarm, in every wave!

They are tiny, these planktonic supernovas,

their lifespans shorter than any star or galaxy.

But to your light-thirsty eyes, they are the same:

a single sip.