When the Pilot Arrives

the pilot arrives When the world was big, and my ship left Trinidad just as the sun set over the blue Caribbean and women, at the dockside waved goodbye forever, or perhaps not, if the ship returned with the same crew. The Panama Canal was efficient and American, all business The Pacific Ocean, the ship was a tea leaf in a giant's saucer any minute now we would disappear and become a mystery at sea, written about in seafarers magazine. Indian Ocean, finding a small island long before Apollo made the world into a smaller planet The moon is a balloon, as David Niven wrote. The world has shrunk, it is indeed a tiny place a dot in the galaxy hard to see yet we go on fighting about religion and silly political views, and the beauty of what could have been is lost in a blur of hatred