Head up the street from here and you’ll see two sailboats

parked on either side of a neighbour’s house.

As age took the strength from his arms

he no longer went out alone onto the lakes of the south coast.

From time to time strangers knocked on his door

with a fair offer for the boats on the off-chance

which he’d quietly decline; even when his wife lost her patience

and his kids pleaded.  So the two little sloops have crested

these asphalt currents for years, into chilly snow-fledged winds

that come off the Brindabellas; or found themselves

becalmed in summer’s baking skillet,

the bigger one’s bright orange hull fading as it follows

its walleyed compass forever west; while the other—

once white and blue— has become grimy

with woodsmoke and dust’s high water mark,

its companionway overgrown with mirror bush.

He hears the soft chink and chime

of eyelets moving in the breeze; night hauls

vast sheets up the streetlight’s distant mast,

hours lift like black ducks from water—

Why do they call him back when he is still sailing out there?

​

Thin Places Literary Journal Issue 2 July