Beneath the Anger, Always Sorrow

In The Perfect Storm, there is a moment when the actors are transfixed metaphors
Staring at a patch of sunset beyond the fray until
Seeing the wave that would push them away from sun, back into the darkest day
George Clooney, bearded, brawny, bruised by life, curses the storm that will not let them go

In your sorrow, my friend, you were such a sailor
Not on film or page but in flesh and blood, looking at the pink horizon of hope beyond the waves
For a moment, your anger abated and there, beyond the black and gray of it, you saw the pain
Touched it, felt the throat-tightening grimace in the underwater vault of it, 
Always kept at bay by the energy you expend wrestling that Leviathan away
Beneath such thick skin

The pink sky ahead was the way out of it
But it will not let you go—the rage—unless you find a way into the pain 

Sad to say, Clooney and those sailors went down with the ship
It’s not much of a metaphor, then, unless you can flip the script
And claw your way to that horizon
Where the sunlight warms and burns you to death
Like the boy covered in dragon scales who became himself again, but
With searing pain—the sloughing off of second skin—
The agony of being lost and found
The strain of being saved
As the ocean always brings its truth to bear:

The path of life is more painful than death
Resurrection far harder than a watery grave