“I Should Hope To See”

By Thomas Page

Prompt #8

I should hope to see the end of the oceans that branch into the horizons which I cannot see because I have astigmatism,

Because my eyes aren’t quite placed in my head in the right way, my ophthalmologist said,

Because the pressure that my head mimicking the pressure of the gallons of water under the surf

Which incubates all of the dolphins and fish and sharks and whales and coral

That is covered in the plastics that revolutionized the post-Sputnik world because science

Deemed that we could see beyond what the firmament held in under the cumulus and the nimbus that left

Opening a curtain to the warrior’s belt of the bear’s pan or the reddened eye of Betelgeuse

And send people into space from the coasts of Florida touching the Atlantic

To see all of the blues and greens and gapping O3s that sit beneath the feet encased in steel

Landing in the ocean once their apollonian flight ended and they like the albatross send

Sailors into the sea from which the land rose like swimmer from the English Channel

Bobbing up and down up and down up and down up and down up up down down

Radioing in to Houston that they are back from their flight in the stars which guided the

Eyes glued to sextons bobbing up and down up and down with the tide on wooden, flightless craft

At mercy to Aeolus’ wind given to the mythic hero who inspired people to name the lamps in the sky

Painting the nightscape of the ocean telling you are still underneath the heavens

That I for the life of my can’t tell when I park my own craft parallel to the stars.