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