I stand with arms on railing
While below
Against the promenade’s stone foundation
The sea softly laps
Around me young lovers
Nervously experience feelings
Of new urgency as a light chill
Sits in the air of this late season
While scars on the faces of
Gentler, patient
And tolerant older lovers
who are seated on benches and low walls
Tell of times when
A moment with a suffering partner felt
Distressingly like forever
And for all the wrong reasons
I look into the gentle and pleasing
Middle-distance of a sunset scene
Stretched out just for me
Therein I see a myriad small craft
Operated from the V&A Waterfront but now out here
As far as Three Anchor Bay
Plying their tourist trade
And around them
Smaller craft in which the hopes and lives and dreams
Of friends and families
Are floating
And all of them
Are floating
Further out in the distance are the lumbering giants
Of commerce
And industry
The world’s floating factories
And its great floating storehouses
Made of determination
True grit
And of steel
All of them
Floating and
All of us
Sandwiched between pink and blue skies
With the inky deepening blue below
Just for today and in this moment
There is no wind
And our faces are all open
And pointed to the sun in the sea
And somewhere in this watery soup
Of gluons, quarks and quasars
Some of us
With eyes nicely open
And awake
Are aware
That we are all just
Floating