I was twelve when the Queen of England came on her pretty blue boat
to wave at me and many thousands of curious Yankees
lined facing eastward on the western bank of the St. Clair river.
Someone with binoculars shouted out: “There she is, on the upper deck!
Queen Elizabeth is waving at us”.
People all along the American shore began to wave back.
A man with a big telescope, mounted on a tripod, stood in the back of a
big red pickup truck. He looked up and shook his head.
I heard him chuckle. So did my dad.
We walked over and asked what was so funny.
To our naked eyes we couldn’t make out the tiny ants on board the HMS Britannia.
They were tiny bugs on the far side of the water, in another country, Canada.
The man helped my dad up into the truck bed and pointed to the eye piece.
Dad chuckled and signaled for me to look, but by the time I looked into the telescope,
the sailor who had been shaking out a dust mop had gone back inside.