#41. Out of Reach

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.