looking up at the waves,
still below sea level
and the wet window, wider
than my bed plus backpack,
reveals a rainbow arc of fish
and armadas of sharks.
the alarm clock never went off,
so i can be quite sure that
all of this is a dream.
up above,
blue-collared atolls
with fine heads of sand
mark this place for the pilots,
who dump people like me
here for days, weeks maybe,
as bank accounts are depleted
and the ravages of the backpacker trail
become moldy memories. nobody
in lonely planet
can make a maldives of the mind,
let you close your amphetamined eyes
in the fullmoon haze of goa
and imagine ever being
submerged again.
