in storms and at sunset

Today we are in Kotor, Montenegro, which is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in my life. It's kind of overwhelming. It also started raining part of the way through the day, and we got slightly drenched and then took the tender back to our boat in the rain, which was a little bit magic.

I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught  
in some moorings. I am always tying up  
and then deciding to depart. In storms and  
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide  
around my fathomless arms, I am unable  
to understand the forms of my vanity  
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder  
in my hand and the sun sinking. To  
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage  
of my will. The terrible channels where  
the wind drives me against the brown lips  
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet  
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and  
if it sinks, it may well be in answer  
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.

—Frank O’Hara, "To the Harbormaster" from Meditations in an Emergency, 1957.