POETRY
Her Rum Ocean
by Paul Leo Howard

A sailor stood still in the night
On the fo'c'sle about counted horizons.
Around him turning water that once spilled crimson fortune,
               Now numbed him nameless in cold memory.
               A twirling blackness from nostalgic directions,
               (a nighttime ocean when time slides unmoored)
And nightblind the sea slipped him back...

"I can feel the ocean," he had said standing beside her.
"And I feel the ocean," she said.
While the sparkling sea stretched to circle itself around a cerulean sky, falling free,
               a fan of foam spread across the sand.
He watched her toes slowly sink into the sinking sand,
               this is everything, he thought, and tasted the salt on her lips.
He looked at her as she looked at the ocean,
and he watched winds lift pieces of her hair.

The night is purest at sea, the universe surges closely,
               the sailor thought, as wind filled his beard.
He parted his lips a little, and wind wound in his mouth.
There was a girl, yes, a girl who had asked, "Am I your dream?"
               Yes, he thought, somewhere there was a girl.

A girl whose hand was his hand
whose face was more than the stars and closer than breathing.
               A girl to whom love gave two lives,
though they had signed in the sand before a flood tide
               their names together.

He stamped his feet and hauled his fists deeper into the coat.
The lines were fast beyond the twirling blackness, the deck rocked gently.
There's rum and the ocean, he thought, the ocean and rum.
               A thousand winds run, the ocean and rum.
The sailor grinned and shivered, tasting the salt on his lips.