with lines from Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius

I come to him a waylaid sailor,
outside the known map.
I come the foundling, the trespasser.

Come calling with the broken cabinet of my mouth,
rescued from the collapsed mouth

of the sea. For we all belong
to one mouth. Is that not true?
We belong to the same imploded star

and map of molecules, same
ribs untangled like vines that grew
toward separate sources

of light. So I come to him as part of him
and am not afraid. Come because I cannot see

all the things seen by him.
I cannot read the optical illusion
of the sea, the light pricking its water

like calculations, the many bright points
within the darkened portion of the moon.

Come because the end of the sea was a world
pouring into its beginning

like the pieces of shadow
encroaching upon the light
of a lunar surface, or a hand bending

its bones backward into its own wrist,
resurrecting its one self.

I saw the lighthouse
sever the wrist of the dark
and knew I had never touched

anything. No one has touched.
Still I come, opening the flooded islands of my palms,
to ask this one thing—