That’s My Ride
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The Poem
That’s My Ride
He watched it go.
That’s the thing about rockets —they don’t wait,the countdown reaches zerowith or without the person who wore the suit,who stood on this dock,who filed the paperwork —and yet.
The boy in the feathered hat knows something.The hat confirms it.The striped socks confirm it.The expression of someonewatching someone else discover a thingthe boy already knew at breakfast —that confirms it.He is not going to say.This is also confirmed.This is what the hat means.
The girl is looking at me.Not at the rocket,not at the astronaut,not at the mechanical ladybug hovering above everythingwith its pink spotted patience —at me.With the expression of someone who has decidedI have been watching long enoughand should ask myselfwhat exactly I came here for.I don’t have a good answer.She already knows that.
The woman with the goggles is fishing.Inside her goggles: fish.She sees everything the fish sees —the water from inside,the dock from below,the rocket’s reflection traveling the lakein the opposite direction from the rocket itself.She finds this neither strange nor worth mentioning.The fish she’s holding has opinions.The fish is keeping them to itself.
Inside her goggles
The ladybug sees everything.Pink. Spotted. Hovering. Patient.Recording all of itfor someone who will review the footageand make a determination about what was happening here.Good luck to them.
The rocket is already across the lake.Its reflection is still here —traveling the water the other direction —which means for a momentthe astronaut has two rockets:the one that left and the one that stayed,the real one and the true one,the one going somewhereand the one going nowhere at all.He is looking at both.
The one that stayed
He writes it in the log:Dock located. Rocket unlocated.Boy: knows something.Girl: knows I’m here.Woman: fishing.Ladybug: recording.Lake: beautiful.
That’s my ride.
Somewhere across the waterthe rocket is becoming someone else’s story.Here on the dock he is becoming this one —the astronaut who stood still long enoughto notice the hat, the gaze,the fish inside the goggles,the reflection going the other way —who stood still long enoughto be exactly where he was,
which is the only place
the paperwork was never going to get him.