To Lie Down. To Wear Nothing at All.

And then just like that, with hardly anyone

noticing, it became daily harder to remember when

this sense of being at sea had begun – at sea, as in

on a wave of doubt mixed with fear and yet no small

amount, incongruously, of fevered anticipation, not joy

itself but the belief, still – the half-belief – some joy

might come. Maybe

                                  the beginning doesn’t matter anyway –

whatever wasn’t the case once, it’s the case now, long

days of jazz and drinks named after jazz, Give me a John

Coltrane, someone saying; another, I’ll take one more

round of these Take Fives…Not that there aren’t

those who suspect the headiness of this new weather

will soon enough dissipate, the holler-and-buzz

surrounding it will follow suit. We’re alike in that way,

you and I – comrades, if you will, in our shared

suspicion, whether you know it yet or not, says

the captain to the young man across the room,

who of course can’t hear him because the captain has

only said this to himself, not aloud yet. He looks at

the young man,

                           who hasn’t yet seen the captain. It’s as if

he’s trying not to look. Look at me, thinks the captain. And

the young man’s head starts to turn toward him. Any

moment he’ll see the captain for the first time. The way

all histories begin, apparently. What destroys finding

what will be destroyed, though which is which has yet to be

determined. Almost lavender, the captain’s eyes are, in this light.