Every single light bulb

You can take the bottom of this canyon
as a metaphor for where things are with me
right now – flat on my back, looking

at a rapidly receding ambition, forever
out of my reach. But I’m thinking of a
story a neighbour once told me, of how

on his 80th birthday, a tea clipper – once
fast and famous, and now gently sliding
out of memory – sailed into the window

of the restaurant he was eating in, and he
could feel that every single light bulb
in the world was illuminated for a moment.