It rose quickly, jerkily, like a ballon
Let go from the happy hand of a child.
How fitting, then, that only a child could,
Should, witness a moment surface and sink,
Grey as a lacquered cotton zeppelin
Barely distinct from the cloud-bank it crests.

Not spouting, not breaching, even splashing,
Flashing knobby spine and rubbery side
At the careless apogee of a stroke
From a barn-door fluke on a tree-trunk tail.
Gone as soon as shown, but for eyes alight
With fixéd wonder, altogether missed.

The boat skates on, inured to childish things.
Nothing is rising and falling here but
A parade of swells arriving and
Departing from our window in the mist.
But a girl’s joy bobs unseen underneath
Her breathless insistence that it was there.

Image: Santa Barbara Channel, Ten A.M., June 2019.