Harbor Ghost

Harbor Ghost
By Fred Muratori

Brightest daylight. Almost two p.m., and sunlight ricochets off the harbor on its way back to outer space. The sky is as blue as any blue thing to which a poet could compare it. I can only compare it to a picture of the sky taken on a day very much like this one. Other tourists pass behind me, snapping photos that will capture not the true image but at best the moment's pale passing. A man in a bright green bicycle helmet and matching spandex shorts holds an ice cream cone in one hand and a cell phone in the other. A prosperous-looking couple with squeaking blonde toddlers cavort around the historic lighthouse that sits between the tide and grassy dunes. They've paid a small fortune to stay here for half the summer, and in fifteen or twenty years neither child will even remember the place. Here by the unshadowed harbor, all of us are safe from ghosts. Small boats that pass are white and neat, named like cherished pets, no hulking high-masted derelicts arising from a fog they carry like a curdled aura. I sigh with false comfort, then foolishly let my eyes wander to the rambling, gray-shingled inn, blurring them at each window, at each delicate, half-hidden face that looks down at me as if asking how I can stand in the New England sun, grasping at others' happiness, when so much I might learn to love waits in darkness.