Adrift in a Dream

I woke to feel my bed was rocking, gently by upheaval cocking,

Sickly churning by the unseen living floor below.

Swiftly I arose to find, the bed that I had so maligned,

Was no bed, but modest, wooden vessel pulled by water’s flow.

With me as its cargo.

The stillness of that placid sea, was fractured by a distant plea,

A kittiwake, somewhere out in the inky blackness calling.

The sallow full moon’s peaking eye, suspended in a velvet sky,

Looked down upon this paltry fishing vessel calmly trawling.

Alone, such a small thing.

Floating in the great unknown, I found that I was not alone,

Across from me, the grizzled, green and sombre sailor hauled a line.

Pulling up his heavy load, a glowing came from depths below,

One by one he dragged aboard great pearls of the divine,

Gleaming, they softly shine.

This was not the sailors catch, something else it had attached,

To bait so luminous it seemed that stars peppered the sea.

In the light from gleaming pearls, the agitated water swirls,

A creature in the deep struggles and thrashes to break free,

The sailor looks at me.

Gesturing, he demands, an extra back and pair of hands,

The huge beast breaches, flops and flounders, on the deck it stilled.

This slimy strange primaeval creature, with its soft aquatic features,

Looks at me with eyes like saucers, glassy skin and gilled,

The whole boat is almost filled.

I knew within that single moment, that this was not my opponent,

Innocent it squirmed upon this foreign territory.

Both of us were at a loss, as to how we came across,

The minor fishing vessel and the stony man before me,

Nyther of us free.

Taking out the largest knife, he raised the blade to take a life,

I grabbed the salamander and manhandled it upon the bow.

The steely eyed mariner, rushed toward me as if he were,

Possessed of most ferocious greed and burning animosity,

Adrift, just we three.

Backing up out of the way, I felt the boat begin to sway,

Then toppled back into the unforgiving murky ocean.

Bearings that couldn’t keep, plunging down into the deep,

Until behind me looming, came another motion,

At once, a fearful notion.

Motion turned to scales and skin, a monster huge and long and thin,

Emerged out of gloom, by light of the moon, lustrous and alluring.

Minuscule before this gargantuan, man-eating leviathan,

Frozen in terror, my demise a sure thing,

In this domain, he was king.