n. Delirious fumbling with bedclothes

Afloat on the crushed ocean of our sleep
we could be those shipwrecked souls,
les naufrages, marooned by the imperfection
of dreams and eyeing each other
hungrily. Or jaunty in command,
steering by the sphered
armillary of our joining,
we sail across rippled sheets for love's far horizon.
This is a grand sleep. It fills up
our sails, knows no anchors
(they are all old, anyway),
takes weeks, months, digs in
to the day and carries us,
fumbling mutineers, delirious with the dark
sun of dreams, to a new Pitcairn.
We will never find sleep's
Europe lost in these ample folds
nor ever require it, nor ever cross
those currents set between us. They carry
us on in night's inverted ocean
past the bubbled constellations
of fish-eyed stars and the shooting trails
of garfish, a winnowed blink of bait
and the mullet's mad plop. We run on alone,
three sheets to the wind on passion,
one for our mingled breathing,
two for our solitude,
three for the surface of dreams
shattered each morning
adrift on tangled sheets…