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.