Day So Bright

Denise Pendleton

We are afloat, a speck held
in a wide blue bowl, sails raised
with cumulus clouds flying their own
white across another kind of blue.
The bright sun at last upon us, lavish                      

lustrous, from everywhere. Our bones
unloosen their stiff selves. Limbs turn languid,
voices adrift. Our eyes busy themselves to see
who might be swimming in these waters
we travel for two days, two couples
more than sixty-five years into life sailing
on a not-big boat. Who hears us barking,
honking hello to seals rolling their fat selves
alongside in their own blue home? 

Come night, we become heavy, laden
with so much light. Our eyes burn                               
to close when the stars arrive to say
goodnight, time to enter dark. Dream again.
Sleep the sleep of the drugged. Give in 

to the time told by the wind saying, go slow now.
Go slow with the light you've taken in. Sink
into the numinous, luminous, liminal. Not flying,
not sailing, but lifted, transported. Another
fleck of weight on blackened waves arriving   
from somewhere dark or the light you can't know.

---

Denise Pendleton
Denise Pendleton holds an MFA in Poetry from Washington University, where she was awarded a full fellowship and is a recipient of The Jinx Walker Poetry Prize of the Academy of the American Poets. Her poems have appeared in a variety of online and print publications, including American Sports Poems Anthology, Northwest Review, Deep Water, Tar River Poetry and Kerning. After thirty years away, Pendleton returned with her husband and children to her mid-coast Maine hometown for its easy access to boating along the coast. She is recently retired from a career of teaching and promoting reading and writing.