The Ship Sails On

Near the beginning of a long summer twilight a sailboat moves across the horizon. The white sails and white hull reflect the shifting colors of the changing day. Blue tints the sail, soft blue of sky, blue of clearest ocean, yet there is a translucency to the sail, something like the nacreous luster of pearl. The hull is more opaque, the gleaming fiberglass more stable, but that too takes on some of the mutability of August twilight, everything shifting with the night. The sailboat slides paralell to the shoreline, moving across my beach. I go out to swim and follow the same line. Every time I look up to breathe the ship is there moving with me. My beach ends with a heap of boulders, glacial till, and I stop before I leave sand for dangerous rock. I stand waist deep in the cool water watching the ship sail on.