Anchored

Dear You,

From a seat at a table near the window at Isaac's Restaurant in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the waterfront, you look out at the harbor. Nearly any day, I am certain, even the most marvelous meal wouldn't keep you from turning your head toward that scene. This day I wished I were a painter. Anything to keep it in memory longer than the time it took to finish my broiled scrod and settle the bill.

Down the block was the replica of the Mayflower, where it has been about a half-century already -- streams of tourists waited to step aboard her to see How It All Began. Between it and the main pier, where they tie up the big Captain John boats -- the ones you can take to watch whales off Stellwagen Bank or go further out and try to catch a fish -- dozens of smaller vessels pulled at their bouys, swinging whichever way the wind and tide dictated. And farther out were the jetties that protected the harbor, and the islands beyond them.

This was a gray, October day. Rain sieved through overcast in a way that made motorists along Water Street uncertain where to set their window wipers, and pedestrians kept unfurling their umbrellas and then putting them away again. On another day, the colors would have been more intense -- this day all was muted. It was a day for solemnity, serenity.

I thought, not for the first time, that we are ourselves like those small boats, temporarily moored in the tides and changing winds of life, shifting first one way and then another, poised for the next ride to wherever, subject to forces so much larger than ourselves that we only rarely pause to consider them. And since I am neither the painter the scene required, nor a poet who might have put it here more properly, I took the cell phone from my pocket and used it to take a photograph.