Mosaic Lights
One leg over the ledge, one planted firmly on the ground
One arm extended out into the cool air, one laying calmly on my relaxed leg
The night is clear
The boat glides along the surface of the water, producing intermittent waves that lap over each other as they extend outwards to the expanse of solitude
Behind me is music, lights, people, talking
Somehow it’s so much quieter with my head outside, even though the speaker still lingers right by my ear
My mind feels the ease of hearing a car that has just passed, the feeling that noise is right there, and yet it has a sublime quietness, ethereal
I look back out at the water
It’s so dark
The surface of the water looks like waves of pure black glass, shifting with the tides
The lights of the city reflect, contouring it
It feels as if that’s the only way we can see it at all
That without the light to guide us, we would merely be looking into an eternal darkness, one that goes down and down and down and down, further than eyes can reach
We pass a transportation vessel on our right, with glowing yellow and blue lights to illuminate
As the waves of the ship slowly slither along the water, they begin to pull colored light into them
Almost like cloth soaking up ink, the water begins to sparkle and shine, with a newfound brightness
It looks like rivers of flowing light, drifting across the glass
I long to touch it, though I know it’s just water
The wind of the traveling boat is so refreshing, reminding me that I am not merely a spectator of what I see around me, but a part of it
I run my hand along the edge of the ship, feeling the surface
It’s so hard to believe that this is real
That we are all walking on water
We move above the fish and the whales and the plankton and the kelp
Above us still is the bay bridge, a genuinely magnificent display of architectural design
A concrete aqueduct of civilization, ferrying people in vessels of steel and aluminum across what was once almost certainly an impassable obstacle
I can see the city lights shining off the windows of the cars as they pass
The flow of light is so pulchritudinous, reaching every corner of the space around me
The light forms rivers on the water, and with every upward pull of a wave seem to take flight
The tendrils of blue and yellow reflection set the water alight
The cars create rivers of the concrete that flow through the night
The magnificence of the city and the world around us glimmer in the glass sea below
And as I look up, I can see our glorious aerial explorers, flying across the globe, connecting all this in front of me to the wonders of the world we live in, waving down at us with their intermittent red lights
Above even those, I see the light of the stars
I’m so glad they are there
What if our light was the only one, a spinning ball of fluorescence in an infinite sea of darkness
Oh, how lonely that would feel
It is pleasant to know, that there’s something beyond us
Something to be proud of this planet we’ve built