THE BOTTLE by John Doak

Sombrero cast away comically, watching a flagon full
of messages float onward toward the moave-haze horizon,
pocked by Cagliari’s lights in their shades of saffron and Navajo white.

Every rippling whip of sea wind from here to Mount Mannu
has your name whispered within it. With your wine-soured breath
you call back in song; a spiritual for the jellyfish, a psalm for the dirt-road.

Our bottle embraces a chink of the world’s decaying light – its last flourish.
We follow it with our reddening eyes drifting long into the night,
only a laughing slip of a moon emerging for a guide.

Eventually the distant city’s lights give way to black.
Eventually the tide arrives to shatter on our rocks.
Eventually the bottle finds a native of the bay.

Internal monologues. Iridescent decay.