The Oceanographer
Brandon Kilbourne
Artwork Michaela Ivancova. Stream
Inspired by the Carta Marina of Olaus Magnus
I know the swirls and eddies of these seas
like the lines navigating my own palms.
I have traveled the seas to all the world’s
corners – spice harbors beyond the map’s
borders, merchant ports brimming with ducats,
the rock face caves of runners and smugglers.
My time on these waves has wizened my brow,
while the salt winds have gnawed my hair brittle
and lashed knuckles clenched round my raised spyglass.
Like your irises’ rivaling sapphire,
blue waves shield what impels and inhabits.
Yet for all my share of amassed nicks and wears,
the sea has ever bloomed marvels before me –
floating jellies harried by hull-backed turtles,
seahorses tail-twined in kelp-waft gardens,
octopus caretaking crab shell graveyards,
frost-seals swooping amongst berg-sunk shipwrecks,
spires of towering reef cities flourished
in reds and ochres, emerald and silver,
ringed in trains of sharks, eels, and gem-scaled fish.
All their splendor hidden deep in sapphire,
dark hues stolen from your lambent blue eyes.
I steel myself for the offing’s frontiers,
my compass bent upon the horizon’s
blue gilt, guiding me in dugout and skiff,
agile longship and high-walled galleon.
I welcome the sun’s scorch to batter cracked skin,
I savor spume’s kiss upon my dry lips,
I hail the boom of colliding ice floes.
Let the crash of waves hurl me to seas undiscerned,
and douse-blinding storms test my mariner’s wits.
All my daring to dull haunting sapphire,
old seines ensnaring through your rippling blue.
Beneath capricious sprawls of jostling waves
lurk beasts fathomless in their sunless lairs
beguiling by siren song in briny swells.
There is no gold too dear to know what sits
and speeds amongst dark-gulfed trenches and vales,
breaching to sun’s gaze from peregrine deeps
from Faroe south to arctic deserts north –
wonders refuged in sunken hinterlands,
luring my eyes to domains foiling light.
All their strangeness masked by your rich sapphire,
though I fled your veiling blue so long ago.
Where heavens join ocean in seam of night
stalk mysteries beneath prows towing dawn –
kraken slaughtering by the maelstrom’s gyre,
whale-fish breathing geysers to flip frail rafts,
vast serpents splintering ships in vise coils,
mermaids and gorgons rescuing sailors
thrown overboard in maritime tempests,
hauling them abreast porpoises to white shores,
nursing them on fruits plucked from seafloor groves.
All dwellers ensconced in unplumbed sapphire,
like your thoughts stirring below lidded blue.
Tireless, I sound each groundswell’s dark-homed root,
salvaging crude inklings of seabed-born
riddles mirrored in spindrift irises.
Line in hand, I know the sea will outlast
my vigil long between terror and awe,
bringing me solace and slumber final
at foundations of currents and abyss,
where among formless ruins a net-shawled goddess
strokes the brows of drowned sailors and lovers.
Resting where flickered shadows billow sapphire,
serene among darkness birthing your blue.