Lost and Adrift

Like a ghost ship

Freed of its mooring,

Sweeping you onto the seas of eternity,

Throwing you about as a peace-of-mind vagrant,

You reach for the weathered mast,

Appearing as the cross on your have-not’s grave.

You hug tightly.

Struggling to count the white caps

As they chase the froth of others.

Like wing-torn butterflies downwind.

With land out of view,

You seek escape inside.

You lean across the pool table,

Your frayed tuxedo becoming clouded with stick-chalk

As the vessel pitches and rolls,

Swaying the bar’s glasses in a macabre dance

Trying to keep up

With the record player’s needle bouncing

Across the record grooves of some jazz piano blues

Giving rhythm to the swaying potted palms,

You chalk up and take unsteady aim at the eight-ball

And scratch with the sudden heave of the ship.

As the moon tries to rise above the horizon,

You make your way to the stern,

Then to the forward,

Searching for your casket-like cabin,

Peering through porthole after porthole.

The sight of your weathered face stops you,

Reflecting the gray and pale like shade

Of the moon busy dodging clouds,

Then returning to its blurred identity

As the ship continues its rolling against the tempest,

Seeking that one definitive,

Crashing,

Wave

To

Deliverance.

You are becoming focused

With the realization…

Who was I?

Who am I?

Perhaps…

The answer only comes

After all the questions are exhausted?

But…

From where does the resolution come?