Shelter Bay, British Columbia, 25 June 2017

A happy expectation on a sunny afternoon

Infected the line of cars, trucks, and bikes
Waiting to board the ferry to Galena Bay.
Why? Just the sun? Maybe. A hundred,
Hundred and twenty years ago, these
People, these costumes, these kinds
Of machines had never existed. This kind
Of excuse for poetry, neither. Now, we were
Here, all hands on deck, combustion engines
And smartphones, bare limbs, teeth, shades,
Faux tribal tattoos, chatting excitedly,
Our new world in this tense common as dirt
Because the past was churning under us
And the mountains in their patchwork woods
Had yet to fall down on us, although they did
Occasionally slip or burn, and what was next
Was creating us the way the big-dog diesel
Engines throbbing at our feet were creating
Our intricately braided, vanishing wake.