My Boat Broke

Somewhere between an in and out wave,
my boat broke; it’s an essential
scaled down vessel of my body -
alarm bells began to toll
in the pith and plank of being.

Water being almost always in a fluid state
did the unexpected and played dead,
attaining a most unusual state
of neck down paralysis

and so, head moving left and right
yet frozen beneath,
(assuming there was a beneath),
I remained trapped upwards,
caught like a small fly in a glass of merlot.

The boat, though riddled with holes,
sinks only to the gunnels yet plows on,
gliding gracefully upon a moon-path
toward a moon that had hid its face under
a soggy pillow.

By now I could hear the bed creaking
under the strain of being nudged
by several icebergs.

‘I am not a fruit fly’, I shouted,
as a rising sun
raced to a corner of the bedroom
to watch my dreaming brain
struggle up to the level of its eyes

while I reluctantly bobbed
in the stale undercurrent
of that fourth unwise
glass of red wine.