The view tipped forward
Toward gray shores
Moored to a black fjord.

I could see the deep-sea beasts below
As they sailed or drifted past, to or fro,
Traveling fast or slow, little living skiffs

Thrashing, splashing, throwing their lights upwards,
Striking the bottoms of these concrete cliffs,
Assaulting the air, algae alive everywhere,

Their bioluminescence reaching, leaking
Through, circling the walls and ceiling,
Around and around, turning

This hotel room into
A giant dappled snare,
An aquarium, or perhaps

An aquatic zoetrope,
Its shadows spinning endlessly,
Breathlessly.

All of the celebratory colors
Of the city gazed –or glared–
Straight at me, mocking me, secretly;

To be here, at this time,
In this place –a coincidence or fate?–
Fifty years after exactly–

Serendipity, only not happy–
Imagining those gray shores below
This place rushing toward my face.

I was more than forty stories high –alone, gasping–
Blinded by the colors of the sea,
And you were gone, somewhere in the streets.