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# #41. Out of Reach
- URL: https://www.layersofzoe.net/41-out-of-reach/
- Published: 2026-10-20T08:51:11.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-20T08:51:11.000Z
- Author: Layers of Zoe
- Tags: Signals, maritime

From the window I could see all  
of it and touch none of it.

The big ship was dressed in lights,  
three colours on a rope: a country  
for as long as it burned.  
The small one lay beside her, her green  
line under the pier.

I have a photograph.  
Everything in it is correct.  
It proves one tense,  
*was*.

What holds me is small, a figure  
on the quay, mid-step, at the foot  
of the hull, evidence  
of nothing.

By the time I had her name,  
an hour, a database, a strong  
opinion about green,  
she was ten hours out, sailing south  
at seven and a half knots to a city  
I have not seen.

That is what admiring is, mostly.  
You stand at the one distance where  
the whole of it shows,  
and the distance is the reason.

Reach would have spoiled it.  
I'd have found the rope, the rust, the crew  
on their phones.

Mine I can reach. She has  
a pontoon up the coast and a name  
in script near the bow, taken  
from a hot wind and from a pilot  
who took a stand.  
I know her rope, her rust,  
the barnacles on her hull,  
what it costs to keep her  
still.

So reach turns admiring  
into upkeep.