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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