Dead Reckoning
There’s a gold weather-vane –
a galleon – catching the sun
on the sea-green copper
spire of Sankt Johannes,
not a cloud in the sky,
the ship as if becalmed.
I try to recall
the currents, compass
errors and storms that took me
off course, asking
whether, and for how long
one’s initial bearing lasts.
But on a windless day like this
the fifteen-metre waves
the broken mast
the ice-jammed pully-block
are long forgotten
and it seems one is
exactly where one planned
to be, having kept
for all these years
with sextant and calipers
dead reckoning,
and come home.
by Michael Jackson
from Dead Reckoning
Auckland University Press, 2006
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