Stealth

I awake in the early light

to the smack of water between the hulls.

Something draws me to the tiny porthole by my berth,

not a sound really, more a sensation.

And there on the horizon through the glass

looms an ocean liner of such size

it appears mythic.

All glinting steel and glass,

a beacon under the new sun,

this monolith of turbines and chrome

cutting a swath a football field wide

yet so far away

that neither the bellowing of her engines

nor the roar of her wake reach me,

rendering her, eerily, lifeless,

a paint-by-number colossus,

frozen in a dead calm sea.

Too far away to decipher details

so I settle for only imagining

the early morning risers

now assembling on her decks,

settling into chairs with their first coffees,

breathing in the panorama before them.

Conversation would be hushed, expectant,

Another idyllic day at sea ahead.

Do they see me?

My tiny sailboat moored off a small island,

Might they conjure me too,

Whether I am awake yet,

Where I sail to? From?

What name is painted across my bow.

Will some raise their binoculars to learn more

And watch as my sails fade away behind them,

Before they turn back to their morning.

(Gorda Sound, British Virgin Islands.)