My mother bought me
a blue captain’s hat when I was a boy,
and I remember wearing it
on a school excursion, visiting
historical monuments on
the Floridian shore. What connects
that day with this one, on a brilliant
morning in mid-June, is the clarity
of the sky, the breeze stirring the air,
the feeling that standing there
I could see forever, which
denotes the halcyon days
of the admiralty of childhood,
with their fleet footsteps, always
disappearing as soon as they appear,
and the preternatural experience
of oneness with everything
because of it, that all things are
in concert with each other,
and that my standing near
the lapping waters of Biscayne Bay
and my standing here six decades later,
watching the water course over
South Hadley Falls, I am looking
into the distance of all that,
which also is not without its sense
of proximity, merges distinctly
as does one lens with another
to enable me to see more clearly
that the eternal moment
expands for all time, its perpetuity
streaming infinitely
into the now of the ever-present.
