Feel the salt wind spitting in your face

Here’s an extract from Tony Hoagland’s poem Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet.
I like it because it reminds me how vast our lifetime is, as opposed to the too-fleeting sands I normally see it as. And I’m always prone to enjoying verse that talks about “feel the salt wind spitting in your face”.

Imagine being born and growing up,
rushing through the world for sixty years
at unimaginable speeds.

Imagine a century like a room so large,
a corridor so long
you could travel for a lifetime

and never find the door,
until you had forgotten
that such a thing as doors exist.

Better to be on board the Pequod,
with a mad one-legged captain
living for revenge.

Better to feel the salt wind
spitting in your face,
to hold your sharpened weapon high,

to see the glisten
of the beast beneath the waves.
What a relief it would be

to hear someone in the crew
cry out like a gull,
Oh Captain, Captain!
Where are we going now?

If you liked this post you might enjoy these too:

1. What does cycling round the world feel like?
2. The Wind of God’s spirit
3. Climb every mountain, taste the salt of risk
4. The essence of adventure