Old Mission Light, and a poem

Watercolor in Moleskine journal, Old Mission Light, Michigan

Night Ferry, by Peter Sacks

Blood-drop, lung of fire setting past

the sea bell and wave; why am I separate

from that giant burrowing into further life?

The body breathes and rides

a heavy-netted ocean swollen

by the tide.  Under the half-moon

it's the lighthouse light that turns

the rest of me to early nightfall,

headland, home.  I send it back,

a mirrored flickering across cold waters.

We allow ourselves the crest that breaks

above the surface then re-forms.

We make it human and we call it love.

The wintering is my own and not the world's,

although the world is wintering.