Bolt

I could see the village off to starboard just where it should be. It didn’t help to know that people were doing their normal things with enjoyment or anger, or just nothing in their minds with me sitting out here on this mirror of an ocean unseen too far away for me to even be a curiosity. Of course I couldn’t see them either but as always happens when I see a port I get anxious about getting to it. I can see myself tying up to a dock and stepping ashore to go and get a cold beer and listen to whatever people have to say, just to have people saying something. That thought and the fact that I was alone out here looking over there with some tiny reflections of their lives bouncing off the flat sea between us.

I looked up to my Orion who always keeps me company when my mind starts to slide down and my mood clouds over. But, the sky was clouded over and Orion was hiding behind them. There was the faintest halo of moonlight and even it disappeared. I was alone. My boat was not moving. There was no wind. Everything was dark. The water was dark. The sky is dark. The boat didn’t rock to show me that I do had company in its being beneath me. We just sat there with them way over there and me way over here and only those tiny little moving inter-mitten pinpoints of sparkles telling me that people were over there on land.

The first strike was off to port, disappearing before the corner of my eye could catch it, but its presence remained with a vague twisting thunder. The horizon hid somewhere between a dark grey sea and a dark grey long gone setting of the sun somewhere West of South.

Water lapped lazily alongside the hull. It passed slowly in the very light air. The sails were moist as if it were morning in the place of evening.

Another crack echoed to starboard but turning I only saw monotony all around. Then a bolt split into three almost straight stripes just ahead of me. My eyes blinked at its sudden thick flashing. I looked elsewhere and heard its crackling music still blinking the dots out of my vision. Darkness was merging fast. More strikes from ahead again but I did not look at them. I concentrated on the slightly moving tiller and glanced around to look for storm patches or anything visible aside from my boat.

All of a sudden there was no elsewhere as a distant scattering of light strikes broke from the heavens and entered the seas. Their orchestra began tuning instruments and I looked to see and hear them gathering momentum and approaching me as a central meeting spot. The smell of sulphur lightly touched my nostrils.

I have always been afraid of lightning. As a child my first memory of it out a window in the comfort of our back porch. Even that told me to remember to be aware and stay away. The light from it was elegantly monstrous and the sound was mightier than anything I had ever seen up to that small amount of time I had been alive. Lightning seemed to slash at the sky. That fear remains and I was looking at it surrounding me without the comfort of our back porch.

The first horizontal strikes ran for miles not wanting to rest with thunders chasing them into crowds of verticals. The jagged thin lines of the horizontal streaks screeched the twisting of its notes. A net of light was created all round me with lateral, vertical and horizontal bursts, rays, streams, strikes. I was alone in this tiny boat moving by zephyrs and short surges of wavelets. I was almost still, awaiting what came next, thinking forced thoughts of anything that would not come with any clarity. I could think of nothing but this music of light with its wonderful clashings and pitiful moans. They were all penetrating notes never dreamed of nor wanted.

I tried to get into the dramatic beauty of flashing streaks of the dazzling jags, of reflecting arches of sea lines but there was no control. Life and death have no controls and I felt that I was surely going to be hit. The warmth of my fear ran down my legs inside my trousers onto the socks inside my boots. I could feel the warm urine where I sat helpless in the cockpit. My thoughts caught up with the beating of my heart. I was conscious that my eyes were wider than normal and that there was nobody around to say any of this to.

I was alone in the middle of my own world of phosphorescence, sulphuric smoke and black seas. The lightning did not stay in the sky. They moved in and also out of what I assumed was the sea. My surround was being defined by light in pulse, beams, rays, flashing jags. Movements that halted the world, then let it move again.

There was no sense in being afraid of these sporadic, ever-present forms. There was nothing I could do about it. I kept telling myself this between cringes and gnawings of teeth. Time could not count the seconds between the wonders and the trepidation.

Spasms of tension with hairs standing in rushes accompanied me as I bravely went into the cabin. The ports were brilliant spotlights that undulated the cabin scenes my eyes recognised. I reached up behind me to the bottle of Barbancourt Three Star Rhum. The label was well lit. I unscrewed the top in jerks to the corresponding near crashes of thunder consciously hiding from the light outside. I lifted the bottle and drank a timeless amount of the liquid. The lightning was now inside me as a tasty substance of caramel.

The coals were burning low so I added some kindling and more coals. Looking into the small flames a warmth filled me with what was inside here and outside there. I am here and was there as a very small bolt defined my life.