Twilight on the Baltic

Have you ever experienced a moment of a beauty transcendent, only to have it shattered by a sudden disturbance; a loud noise, a group of tourists, a jet’s long contrail?

The sea turns gold beneath the sun’s farewell.

Suddenly, a ship is born—
as if the earth itself has parted.

I watch it ease into the channel,
slow, deliberate.
A languid plume of brown smoke
dissembles into the dusk.

The passage writes itself upon the water,
by the wake it reveals.

So foreign it appears—
disembodied,
mechanical,
impersonal.

A fugitive from time,
adrift without purpose.
I see no resemblance
to the nature it traverses.

Yet, in quiet reflection
the ship claims its own fate,
gliding soundless
across the shimmering Baltic.

It draws near, and I think
how beautifully this moment
might endure in memory—

photographed, preserved.

In such a place I come to see
tranquility,
harmony,
majesty.

I lift the lens to my eye,
to frame the sea and sky.
My finger rests upon the shutter—

then—

the ship’s horn rips the air apart!

Suddenly displaced

I lower the camera,
the silence broken,
the moment erased.