Darkness was a foil for the problem

Darkness was a foil for the problem.
A ship without power does float.
Without light, without fuel
you can get there. Float.
Listen. The tongues of the waves,
lapping like dogs our steel vessel.
Some days the echoes of engines.
Always the current, always the wind.
Always the land as a limit, a hand.
Darkness was a foil for the problem.
When the ship’s lights returned,
(first the captain’s illuminated a wheel
I’d held and relinquished, then the stern’s
showed a place I’d forgotten, last
the bow’s the most terrifying of all)
a flood of light upon everything then
made a wheel seem necessary again.

Jennifer Tseng