The Rowboat

I had a rowboat but I lost it.

I live in a place, inhabited but not overcrowded, and the boat would take me away from it, through bubbling channels and quiet lagoons, to drift instead among the frogs and the light-footed dragonflies that skate on the surface of the pond. It's not long being in the boat before my troubles disappear; I disappear, into the swirls of water, or swirls of algae in the water, imagining shapes onto them as if they were clouds; or I look into the shapes of the clouds reflected onto the surface of the water; or I look into the clouds themselves. I follow the current's meanderings, navigating its minute discoveries—why is the air cooler here?—why do the fish gather there?—Hello, old rock. I might as well be sailing around the world, I'm so far from my troubles; till I find my way back, more at peace than before, tie up my boat, and resume my business.

Then one day the boat was gone, whether stolen or lost to the weather or a weakness of the rope or most likely the carelessness of my knot, I don't know; but I'm sure it's the last: that one day, I'd have paddled up toward the dock, drifted, bumped it, stepped springing onto the bouncing pier, sun in my eyes, sweat dripping from my brow, smell of summer on my skin and in my hair, some sogginess from water, worry about sunburn, hungry, missed phone calls, impatient to-do lists, life—I forgot to tie up my little boat, or tied it poorly, I'm sad to concede. Waves pushed at it, gently, again and again, into the dock, knocking like a welcome but tentative guest; then, disheartened, nudged by a chance in the wind, pulled it in the other direction. Away. Adrift.

Headless, the boat wandered toward a deeper part of the pond, where, finding an easy current, followed it to the place the pond meets the creek; stalled for a while on a shallow embankment; nudged again loose and away, to the spot less visible to us than the fishes where the creek becomes the river, where the river opens out to the sea, and the boat was free free free, tiny on top of a whole underwater world, rising up on the waves, falling, up and down, the earth's own breath; and in this way, it torqued and turned and traveled the world, following warm waters up, passing bare beaches and thick forests, steep cliffs, crackling ice, breaching whales, flocks of birds, flocks of fishes; vessels too passed it and noticed it or passed it and failed to notice, fishermen from Portugal, from Japan; an ocean tanker which itself contained a kind of ocean; happy people in the heavy sun; sad people; people of all kinds. This little boat saw them all, though it didn't understand or recognize them, but drifted on, oblivious to the richness of its adventures; while I, at home, regretted my poor knot and thought on it often.