Catalina Run



Nightfall and the sloop's sails,
hauled up by heaved and heaved halyards,
the heads sliding against brass tracks
go whirring and surging skyward
into the high autumn darkness
where the west wind welcomes them,
thrumming the starboard stays taut
as I leave the mainland behind.

The swelling spinnaker, set,
snaps out bolder than braggadocio
puffing up the air's chest
until I must hold the rudder hard
against the swaggering wind
answering to some inner memory,
Mediterranean waters calling me
seaward under the swan's sky.

Yet, even in this transparent air
the abrupt but far shore of Catalina
is not more than imagined landfall,
a darkness imposed on a dark horizon,
while behind me land lights flicker,
go out like stars falling under
the hissing sea, and, thus embarked,
I journey on the long wind's edge.

Tonight the ocean wants no moon
to show the measure of its swell
for it silhouettes my sea passage
with a living phosphorescence
surrounding the wake's whisper
in an aura of attendant light
that affixes my reality
to a threshold of revelation.

Now the shining dolphin come,
heads harnessed in tubes of light,
moon-silver cylinders that lengthen
embracing the sea-fastened frames
of the racing bodies, and they ride
joys out of my forgotten past
winding and braiding them
into the night's sea celebration.

Speeding out and in by the bow
they are the inner mind's
one very idea of completeness
and when they rush below
they bore light into the abyss,
an intellect of illumination
bound to this watery vision
and woven through with wonder.

Down they go
pulling under that bond of light
into their tunneling descents,
the glow sounding with them,
to disappear beyond mortal depths
leaving only a luminous trace
of that downward passage
lingering in the wake of my mind.

Then, beneath rekindled constellations
the vessel, released, breathes again
parting the sea at the bow
as the stretched night shrinks back
to the width of this seafarer
leaving light only to mark earth
with its more human boundaries,
and me, sailing onward toward Catalina.