There was no moon and yet the night 
was filled with light so brilliant and close 
that for a moment I was one with those ancient ones 
who imagined the stars to be lights 
attached to a vast and beaten metal dome 
that stretched from horizon to horizon
over the flat disk of the earth. 
 
The sea too was all smooth strangeness. 
Phosphorescence rippled from my bow 
and trailed in turbulence from my stern. 
Dolphins rose and from their glistening backs 
iridescence spread in psychedelic patterns.  
I pinched myself. Was I awake? 
Could such abundance of beauty be real? 
 
Then my jaw dropped,  
my eyes went wide, 
my hair stood upright  
and my heart beat hard and quick. 
She came walking across the water, 
looking as she did when she first appeared, 
her hair wild and disheveled, 
her night garment white, long, clinging 
and luminescent in the brilliant night light. 
Where her feet touched the water 
patterns of colored light flowed 
and in her wake was the fading glow
from where her feet touched the sea. 
 
 
I know not how she rose to my deck
but she was beyond resistance. 
Come, she said, reaching out her hand. 
There are things you must see and hear. 
Like one stunned, I gave her my hand 
and together we rose into the air
while my boat sailed on, surrounded by light.  
There was a figure at the tiller 
who looked and dressed like me, 
and yet I was in the air and moving rapidly 
towards a distant light that shone 
like a single unblinking eye 
and this thought leaped into my mind: 
Does this light shine as a beacon or a warning?