Again and Again

Today I think I finally fixed our watermaker.  When we returned from our 2 months touring Thailand, Vietnam, and New Zealand, the water it was producing had a particulate content far too high.  At first I thought it was a bad membrane.  The device uses an extremely fine filter through which sea water is forced thru at high pressure, and, in a process of reverse osmosis, produces almost pure water.  If the filter is clogged, or, as I thought might be the case, contaminated, the water comes out decidedly impure.  So I cleaned the filter, using a special solution.

No go.  Start over.  This time, replace the end caps on the filter, where, in theory the good and bad water are kept separate.  This time it worked; there must have been some small cracks allowing the bad water to mix with the good water on its way out of the filter.  All good.

I also needed to fix a leak in the starboard bow -- clean out the old caulking, re-apply.  All seemed good until we got some rain.  No go.  Start over.  

With Jennifer in the States visiting family, I have a lot of time for introspection, and, as with Distance (below), these do-overs got me thinking about things ... I ask for another indulgence for another poem arising from this voyage we've undertaken:

Again and Again

Torpor, lassitude, a weariness sets in just thinking about the words

To describe the sensation of finishing only to begin again and again.

Today it’s the persistent leak in the starboard bow, the jammed valve,

And yesterday it was something else, something harder to diagnose,

A vibration coming from the engine, or perhaps a loose hatch cover.

                                

Some problems fix themselves, while others are so very reluctant

To succumb to my attention.  For me, effort is no predictor of success,

Even when I try hard to understand what might have happened

When you told me your heart was breaking and I nodded my head,

Unaware that acknowledgment was as much as I could manage,

Not realizing until now that I always need to begin again and again,

That I am not finished.

We are never finished, you and I. So let me begin each day again and again,

Repairs upon scars, regretting losses, marking gains, making the effort

That may never suffice to complete what we began so many years ago,

Yielding to a new beginning each day, so that in waking I might start anew,

Mending fences, tending to your breaking heart.

Distance

I've been researching the charts we'll need for our next legs, trying to make sense of the various scales on the paper charts available through online publishers ... the smaller the scale, the larger the covered area, so small scale charts make sense for the spaces between harbors and reefs, while large scale charts -- small area, lots of detail -- are needed for inshore navigation. I got to thinking about distances, and my tendency to underestimate the number of days it might take to get from one port to another. One thought led to another, and then this ... another in a continuing series of poems arising from our circumnavigation:

Distance

On the chart, it’s just a few inches from there to here,

A day’s sail perhaps, or at most, an overnight journey

Underneath a ceiling of stars also impossibly near.

                     

After the voyage we’ve just completed, it’s easy

To imagine it took no effort at all to weather the storms,

That the ocean’s toll on our boat was just cosmetic.

Passages are like that for me:  the compression

Of time and distance into just the memory of the departure

And landfall, as if the in-between moments hardly existed.

Moments like these:  a birth, a vacation, your garden;

With little effort, I can assemble these into an easy lifetime

Without pain, disappointment, or the erosion of our selves.

How did we get here then, you and I?  Were there nights

Filled with dark clouds, distant storm lines, days

Of scuttling skies, breaking seas, unexpected squalls?

Or are we still sailing unruffled waters, headed elsewhere,

Where we might again forget the passages and recall

Only the places we’ve been, where we are, who we are?

I imagine that chart, spread on the navigator’s table,

Creased with use, spotted, frayed, and scribed

With a new course, across a new ocean, under new stars.

Under this sleepless sky, I imagine another passage for us,

As if we could somehow continue this journey together

Without regard for memory, consequence, history.

But there are distances not measured on charts,

And we know too much about oceans, boats,

Each other, ourselves, to ignore the cost of passage.

What landfall will ever again appear so near, or so far?

Earlier poems here:  Aftermath    Runes  Date Line  Celebrant  The God I Asked  If I Were A Boat 
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