The Ferry

John Poch

In Casamicciola Terme port, the big ferry
drags its anchor, backing out toward Napoli,
and stops, delays for some reason, and even
the slight breeze blowing the flowers on this patio
overlooking the port now stills. The wind
and the ferry are not connected by cause,
rather coincidence. The captain of the ship
cannot have forgotten the anchor, or no, or yes,
yet the ship backs out dragging (is it drug or stuck?)
an overly thoughtful weight until all stills again.
The travelers line the upper deck, their summer
flower colors obnoxious as cheap cocktails.
The ship wants to go but the anchor doesn’t. Beyond
the pier another ferry has stalled to wait her turn.
Nearly all of us wonder why the big delay.

Release, and the clanging chain draws up, link
by link. I don’t know how it works, that dragging.
The three-story boat begins its drift to blue.
The other ferry’s travelers compete with their own
reds, yellows, and purples (Germans?), and look
at the departing travelers across the expanse
of waiting over water. What did one flower say
to the other flower? Nothing. The boredom is pretty
from my balcony. The classic boredom of ships
and their routines, the natural boredom of blue,
of waves, the boredom of salt and so much rust
and disintegrating stone, sunburnt old men waiting
at the dock for old women, of bakers approaching
noon, which seems like midnight to them, of island
firemen (that boredom unparalleled and necessary),
of half-full notebooks, of weeds in potted plants,
of the oleanders and geraniums flourishing
and failing all summer, of broken terra cotta pottery,
the boredom of poetry, my clumsy but useful
and dragging anchor that keeps me in this chair.
I drag my anchor, and anybody wonders why.