Princess Of Acadia Poem by James Andrews

Waiting for the ferry
I found a piece of Delft, or so I thought,
Blue white and shining on the rock beach at St. John's,
Mixed it in with unfamiliar coins of Canada
Dreaming of a foundering ship,
The dish and how it might have looked
Stacked on all the others in a busy galley
Ages back when it and she were whole.

I walked along the rounded stones made slick with growth
And watched the tide sweep out so fast
It seemed the ocean raced to find its home.

You lingered by the picnic tables.
I saw you check your watch six times,
Wondered at your sharp fixation,
Your sense of past and future,
How it might survive me.

Later in the empty bar,
Amidst the dreaming roar of engines
And the splashing underneath our hull
I thought I heard you laugh but I was wrong.

You were huddled by a table
Peering pious in your half filled glass.
The laugh I heard came from a stranger.
A fisherman I came on later on the deck.

He pointed towards a far direction
Misting emblems of his home.
He said he missed his wife.
I envied him.

I was moving far from mine.
The closest thing to memory,
Those foreign coins
And small white fragments
Jostling close to silence
In my pocket.