Battleships

I see it tied up to its pier, steel monolith, huge and grey, the USS Massachusetts, now a museum by the quay. Big sixteen-inch guns are silent, the five-inchers point to the sky, kids play on the forty-mil guns, shooting phantom planes as they fly. Tourists walk this leviathan, product of my grandfather’s age, he served then, in the Pacific, might have seen the ship’s cannons rage. His great-grandchildren scamper ’round, one tries to lift the anchor chain, each link outweighs him massively, but the boy still tries all the same. Above the superstructure stands, a massive, armored sentinel, as if guarding Fall River, should any not wish the town well. As if those big guns are waiting, to swing up, belch fire again, a dragon floating on water, built proud by the hardest of men. I know she won’t fight anymore, by modern ships she is outclassed, yet looking at her, most admit: that battleships feel more bad-ass.