your voice traverses the dark atlantic to tell me that you
are getting ropes ready to set sail into
that christopher columbus blackish-blue:
the color of leaving everything you knew.

your voice is heavy with transparency,
your sorry eyes trade wet shades with the sea.

can you imagine leaving life on a flat world?
making the sea become round with your vision,
carving the earth into a sphere with your faith?

you crackle like a phonograph playing
over miles of ocean floor fiber-optics,
telling me, yes, you can.

year after year, explorers followed on that longitudeless watery desert expanse
searching for fate and tall tales of riches untold
giving their lives to the ghost of a chance
finding whole continents while just looking for gold.