Vacation?

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The Vacation

By Wendell Berry 

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat 
with his video camera to his eye, making 
a moving picture of the moving river 
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly 
toward the end of his vacation. He showed 
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it, 
preserving it forever: the river, the trees, 
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat 
behind which he stood with his camera 
preserving his vacation even as he was having it 
so that after he had had it he would still 
have it. It would be there. With a flick 
of a switch, there it would be. But he 
would not be in it. He would never be in it.

(from New Collected Poems, 2012)