for Joe Macaluso

It didn't feel any different from daytime,
gulping deep breaths of night air
and pulling handfuls of tropical water
to propel myself forward.
I halted a mile from shore. Adrift,
I allowed my body to float
until it faced the island, the pitiful lights
of Kalihiwai a bobbing apparition.
Absent forehead, Kauai was faceless,
no skyline brokered land from sky.
Only inkiness.
I may as well have been a mite,
fallen off a quill, floating in an inkwell.
Beyond the island's sunken shoulder
beneath my restless feet, a thousand tepid feet,
the seabed. The first warning
of a grim shark's attack
would be a violent snap of my leg
followed by a succession of choking yanks,
salt water expelling out my nostrils
like a marine iguana.
I flashed on my true scale in the night ocean
a meaningless spec afloat in a watery universe
imagining myself to be
one of the five million microorganisms
contained in a teaspoon of sea.