Sailing By

Viking, North Uitesera, South Uitesera…
Names coming up on me out of darkness,
taking the mind North; radio, bearer
of cold invocations of otherness.

Names conjuring nothing and all: nearer
seas whose danger, complexity, distress 
and storm-force-ten is imminent; wearer
of land's warmth, dry-shod, harboured – I am less.

I have tuned my life to this clock: double- 
O thirty hours, my time sailing by  and 
the only calm I know this sweet, trouble- 
free melody before sleep, like dry land.
Light. Variable. Good. One thousand and ten…
Forecast's well…drifting off…tomorrow's rain.