Fire on the River

The boat sways under a reddening sunset. Is it wrong to wish for a Viking funeral, to ponder a last journey West into the dying light? Strangers have always been my companions, they intuit the liquid, and inflammable nature of this thing we do - this poetry that is the life of us. I could rest here in a free-floating skiff adrift on a long warm wave of evening, let the wooded lands and sloping meadows, the smoke-stacked barge brimming harbors. the patched up, river towns, let them all slip on by under the furled sails of evening clouds. Just drift myself into the dusky flames, as kindling for a starry night, until the flowing waters enter a darkening fall, or should I hitch this small craft to an uncertain tomorrow, maybe land upon another stump of reality, one where imagination can still idly play with fire?