So long.
So long to get
where you want.
In terminal. Orcas.
Arrived 60 minutes early.
With advanced reservations.
To my left, a row of Plexiglas windows
like round-cornered ’60s Kodak prints
frames story panels of time held at bay.
A stoned beach bends grayly southward.
Cormorants, preenless, plume the pilings.
The apprehensive water pends the tide.
I turn to my right, and a lone mast moving
through the opposite bank of Kodak prints
tells me this is quite a different kind of story,
the type that makes you question everything:
Is the ferry creeping past a moored sailboat
or does the ketch edge past us into the strait?
I look again to the left for more of my story.
Am I departing yet? Do the cormorants drift? No.
I find, though, that I can make us appear to move
by closing just my left eye first, then just my right.
The pilings jump within the frame of reference.
I repeat this feat of time travel. They jump. Again.
Finally. No more temporizing.
The ferry is loosed.
I am bound to Anacortes.
I am in want of an alternate ending.
I examine that Kodak print again.
I close my right eye first. Then left.
I move the pilings back, back in time,
cram the cork back in the bottle,
force the ferry back in dock.
Just by closing
both my eyes.
Sheer magic.