spells of things/you might do

I have to talk about something. It was an eclipse, or a lightbulb, this moment pushing off from Napoli, it was like cold and frozen peas to the temple, a lifting up out of gravity, the breath between two worlds like a salve to wounded knees.

It was dusk, a call to religion, men in workman's suits below while I with chin to elbows stood, casting down in fascination toward the ritual and playing upon of this send-off, the coming with the crank, heaving the dungeon's trap door up towards the hull, growling like the hum of mammoth wasps, then the pulling of the ropes, heavy horses, while adjoining the spectacle, an adjacent open-air factory, men in gators with muscles and grease, burning sparks from wet lips and shouting sideways off decks to dark-skinned frowns, when! sudden engines began their gurgle and spit, water frothing in concentric rings -- and I imagined here the tiny fish below and were they alright? -- We would begin to move, I was waiting for it, knowing where to look was almost an agony -- And then it happened, the first and softest thrust. It felt like a gentle misgiving of balance, or wind that one mistakes as the whisper of an earthquake. I cannot forget the smiles and yelling of the crewmen to comrades still on land, making hand signals until it became useless and they waved a final arm and turned. It must have been a child's lighthouse that passed us after we broke from the final bits of rock, so tiny and quiet, bright as heaven through it's mist of pink-carving. I crossed over the deck to the side where the moon swung off, nearly full above Vesuvius, when I was caught by a gulp in the throat, this cursed vantage ever toward the future, and while I write this I ask myself why are we always moving? They are all I really care about, I suppose, these moods that knock me over like a jar. I never know what to do afterward but to be quiet as a bird.

That night when I came out onto the deck at 2:00, it reminded me of stepping onto a stage, lights frightening the hairs on your head, skin tingling with a vibration, the audience absolute blackness beyond, like nothing, like dying, like facing the universe. There was a thin gray line between what was up and what was down. And I thought about the netherworld below, the whales and fishes and serpents and microbial fodder. I touched the railing, and leaned over. I wanted to jump, and it frightened me completely. It wasn't that I wanted to enjoy the consequence of what happens after one should jump off a boat into the night ocean, it was only that the imagination of jumping was so much bigger, I couldn't see the border between the two. I wanted to feel what it would feel like to be in the middle of all the blackness, and was it cold as everyone said?, and what would it feel like to be right on the gray line between worlds, and to watch the boat getting farther from me, the silence in acknowledging it was gone? I stepped away from the railing. I looked again toward the moon, this time higher and much further north. It was casting a spotlight out in the distance that gave the impression of a large ice-skating rink. I went and hid myself between two life-rafts to think. And then I fell asleep, bound for Sicilia.