The wrong coast

We sat on the floor of a canoe and listened to the Victoria
symphony play the 1812. Those first sad long sounds,
the heavy wet feet of Napoleon's army, while scoffing chicken
sandwiches and pinching a plastic cup of Mission Hill
merlot between my knees. That was last week, and now,
this night, we boogie on the fly deck of the forty foot Someday,
docked off Vancouver, watching the fireworks sizzle, die and
freeze into grey ash streaks. The panelled waterfront condos
catch this light, it cascades down to their feet and is deposited
with a shiver into the gentle harbour. One of us is preparing for
root canal, another used to have a charter boat that took salmon
fishermen out of this very harbour -- a mere thirty years ago.
Have I ever had "another life"?
The students of publishing are bent over the beer coolers,
eating cheezies, embracing the captain and the five game
writers. The silhouettes of pleasure craft, their collection of
furled masts, the blimp hull of a Russian tanker with its
impressive rudder. How scale does not alter the need
for a rudder. I wrench my knee taking a stair to the toilet.
Shall we continue to the Railway Club? God yes, let's. It is
someone's birthday and we are stealing aboard a boat she
used to live on. I end up scaling a welded shut Sherman
tank. This does a great service to my wonky knee. I pray
we are steering back home soon, to Newfoundland. Get
me off this coast. It is the wrong coast.