Josh Misner, PhD

A lot has transpired in the last two weeks since I blogged here. We left Poland, had to skip traversing the Kiel Canal in Germany because of technical difficulties (with the canal, not the ship, thankfully), spent about 6 days in Lisbon, Portugal and Cádiz, Spain, and now, we’re crossing the Mediterranean just north of Algiers.

I have some catching up to do on recording our experiences in Lisbon and Cádiz, but for now, I wanted to post a poem I penned a couple of nights ago while battling insomnia.

Out on the open sea, one has LOTS of time to think, ponder, wonder, and stare into the deep blue nothingness of the ocean. This is only made more complex when it takes place at three in the morning when one can’t sleep, so here’s some of my raw, unfiltered, and poetically composed thoughts from that sleepless night:

Three in the Morning

Three in the morning.
The witching hour.
Side to back to stomach to side again.
Repeat.

Incomplete sentences, incomplete thoughts, incomplete sleep cycles.

Your blanket rises and falls like the sun of an abbreviated day.
East to west. East to west. East to west. Every breath a new day, full of hope.
A rise and fall like the possibility to reinvent myself for you again and again.

A notification begs for my attention.
Likes, comments, shares, spam, some other bullshit, etc.
Opposite side of the world, life goes on, but not here.

In this place,
Out the window,
Only darkness,
Lit only by a faint glow — ship lighting,
The wake of the bow the only discernible sign of life for nautical miles of blackness around.

The Mediterranean?
The Baltic?
The North Sea?
Indiscernible, one from another, save for subtle changes in latitude-based temperature.

The corner desk creaks, groaning to the beat of the ship,
The soft glow of USB chargers work graveyard shift.

Three in the morning,
Nighttime back home, where our dogs lick others’ legs and beg for others’ food, while others scour their cupboards for a late-night snack in others’ time zones before settling in for bed in others’ homes that were once ours.

Do they remember us?
Half a globe away,
Are we crossing their synapses,
Characters in their memories,
Subjects of their thoughts,
Objects of their cravings and wondering?

Do we exist elsewhere other than this desolate place of salt and wind?

Four-thirty in the morning.

Not yet time to rise,
Not yet prepared for dreams.

No one’s land.
Our sea.

Home.