Poems

commercial fishing poetry

Twilight on the Boat
forthcoming for Alaska State Parks on an informational sign at Bird Point, 2024

The last of the light
fades from the western sky
until the mountains melt into the dark.
We are rafted to six other fishing boats
adrift on a gentle swell
stopped on a school of salmon.

The scattered vessels of the fleet
are dark shadows in the distance.
White lights glimmer as they sleep
and drift with the ebbing tide.
It's hard to tell where they stop
and the stars begin.

I batten out the night noises:
the soft clinking of rigging
moving with the swell,
the gurgles,
sloshes of the hulls,
the sigh of the sea so close.

A different sound comes behind me,
faint at first,     then again     and there, again–
a whoosh of an exhale     a breath     a gasp for air.

I stand slow and quiet,
to see first one
arcing shape break the surface,
then another; a sliver of light gray
rising from black water.

Belugas! I whisper into the cabin.
Word spreads. We gather in deep twilight
on a dark sea, silent  as they rise for air
around us, hunting the salmon
we are stopped upon.

No one speaks.
They scatter the fish,
but within that magic
we don't care.

The night swells,
a void above and below,
dark upon dark, each sprinkled
with the specks of distant suns–

and a meeting in between,
where we float and they swim.

Middle Rip, Cook Inlet
published in my memoir 'Waiting to Deliver', 2022

It has been cloudy now
a long, long while.
The sea is building.
The unexpected blow
comes from the south,
and is always the worst.

From shore you can’t see
the middle rip;
can’t tell how bad it is –
waves crashing in all directions at once,
moving mountains of green and gray.

And even if you were there
fighting the wheel to keep her on course,
quartering them up and over, throttle forward and back,
watching more of what's next than what's now,
you couldn't tell whether the changing tide
would lay it down or stir it up more.

I've run away from the middle rip
more than once: turned around, saying,
    This is unfishable!
Gritted my teeth, hung on to the helm
as the boat swung in the trough,
trying to time it so the smallest wave
was the one that hit; watched
out the side window, wishing
we would turn faster – knowing
we couldn’t, braced as the wave
slammed the side like a sledgehammer.
Hats, silverware, coffee cups, magazines, camera,
books slide in synchrony across dash and galley table,
reach the edge and erupt around the cabin.

I've even set my gear in the middle rip
with a groan as it kicked up –
    Ahh, it'll come down.
I've seen my deckhand crouch
on the back deck, hold on as the boat heeled,
trying to let the net out without a hangup,
with a glance over his shoulder
and a look that asked Are you insane?

I have stared dumbly out the cabin door
at towering waves behind him, stern
lifting toward vertical, thinking
   Yes. Yes I am.

It's not so bad fishing the middle rip,
but towing the gear in heavy weather
depends upon your mettle and your nerve;
you know you've got to pick up:
put on oilskins, pull your hat down hard
so it doesn't blow off, button the top button
no matter how tight. The cool press
of raingear against your neck
reminds you of how you wish
you didn't have to go out there
into wind and rollers and make
the boat go stern-first into them.

You open the cabin door. The wind
tries to take your breath, but you suck it back,
clench your jaw, hold the lifeline and dance
across the deck, timing it so the side you’re on
lifts away from the water as you move aft.

You pull on gloves as you eye the seas
from the stern of your boat – your boat,
your machine, full of warmth, life
and power to pull in all that net
stretching into the hostile gray glare
until you can't see it any longer –
your boat can get it all back, and more:
it can deliver you safely home.

And it's you and your boat against all this
space, wind and water. You come alive,
stomp your foot on the treadle; the reel
whines, turns and backs the boat
into the waves. The sea slaps the stern
like an insult, drenching you in ice water.
You duck, come up sputtering, laugh,
whoop, and yell the insult back at the sea!

From shore you can’t see
the middle rip;
can’t tell how bad it is.

The Bucket
published in my memoir 'Waiting to Deliver', 2022

All the years I’ve been on a boat,
commercial fishin' on the ocean afloat,
I always seemed to find a way to be
what you might call hygienic –
and never use a bucket at sea.

Now let me explain – my first job was as a crew
on a Cook Inlet gillnetter – and I was new,
so I worked hard and kept my mouth shut
when given all the crappiest jobs, but
all this business with work boats and fish,
the hardest thing to stomach was the dish
my skipper fed me when he said with a smile,
like he knew just how I'd react all the while:
There ain't no toilet on a boat, it's called a 'head’.
We ain't got one here, so use that there bucket instead.

The container he pointed to was black and thin,
tucked behind the ladder, it barely had a rim.
I found out later some guys have a toilet seat
they put on their bucket to make it complete.
But the sketchiest thing was – I mean, what the heck?
I’d have to use it outside, where we pick fish, on the back deck?
Now everywhere we fished there were always other boats around;
seemed to me the only privacy was back on solid ground,
or in the head of another boat that might tie up for a while –
where I could close a door and do my business in solitary style.
No, I was convinced, but didn't show it or say it out loud,
there was no way I was performing in front of a crowd!

So I held it – sometimes for days.
And I never really relinquished my restricted ways.
When we were at sea or even anchored up –
didn't matter for how long – I was one bound-up pup!
With a nod toward the bucket, my skipper once said, Do you EVER take a sit?
Not on THIS boat! I shot back, and turned my head and spit.
Well how do you go about that when we been fishin' out here for days?
he asked, and shook his head at my unnatural ways.
I have a strong sphincter, I began... Ya see... ah, ah chuck it!
I'm telling you I'll never use that stinkin’ ol’ bucket!
I won't have my turds slosh around when the weather gets rough
and slap my port and starboard as the boat rolls in the trough!
And what if that flimsy sucker collapses under me
when I'm sittin' out there emptyin' my scuppers at sea?
I'm tellin' you, skip, I have a fishhold full of motivation
for me to maintain this extensive constipation!
And I intend on holdin' it 'til the season's over and done,
when I can pull down my raingear and rest my bum
on a nice, white toilet seat above a clean porcelain bowl –
where I can properly deposit… a civilized roll!

That said, we went back to work,
and though I was full of it, I tried to not be a jerk.
But whenever a boat with a head tied alongside,
I'd start to feel the surge of an outgoing, ebbing tide!
And when we hit the dock, it was always a lively chase
as off the boat I'd fly and to the cannery john I'd race!
I know my skipper, on more than one occasion
wagered a bet or two against me, but the rising sensation
inside me of impending jet propulsion
always seemed to result in a positive conclusion.
I always made it! I'm really not sure how;
but my sphincter and legs made sure my stern stayed clean somehow.

I'll fly my flag high: I'm proud to say I always did duck it,
and never, ever, ever used that old black bucket!

Best Offer
published in North Pacific Focus Quarterly, 2018

Name the year that was especially good:
high price and fish filled the gear wherever
we set the net. We watched the bank account
grow ten grand a day. 1100 sockeye one opening,
1600 the next. The cocaine dealers made as much
as well-paid crew; parked trailers in the yard
next to empty campers owned by fishermen too busy
to sleep. We were glad they did. Made our dropping
a couple hundred a week into their pockets easier.
They even took trips with their best customers–
pretend-deckhanding on fish days and providing free product.
Everyone knew. No one cared. Toot became a tool
for exhausted crews and cannery workers spending
22-hour days on the slime line. After a shift one night,
Peggy napped in a pickup bed, one leg hanging off
the tailgate when a car backed into her. She didn’t do coke.
Some of us thought she should have.
At least she’d have been awake.

I ran into town for supplies a few days later,
and collided with a lifelong dream:
chromed-out Honda 750 Shadow, parked
in the grade-school lot across from the grocery.
She had the saddle-seat lines of a vintage Harley,
a pompadour of a sign pinned to her handlebars–
FOR SALE: $3,000or Best Offer.  Leave message.
I used the pay phone outside the store. We agreed
to meet when things slowed down. Planned in a cocaine haze,
I didn’t mention it at home.

That summer we used toot like raingear.
Put a line on the table every time
we pulled on a jacket. Sucked lines
into our noses as we worked rubber gloves onto our wrists.
Do a line running out the river, before the first set,
before the first pick, running on a fish call, talking on the radio,
with coffee. Stop for a bite almost never, talk fast all day about anything,
about sex, about more cocaine. When we crashed, the lights
didn’t just go out, they’d blow. Alarms would blare,
we’d get up, do it again. Absent at home, all we were about
was heading to the boat to catch more fish and do more coke.

We sold to a cash buyer after one trip–
I jammed crisp hundreds into a plastic grocery bag,
stuffed it under the seat of my pickup
parked in the cannery yard, then went out fishing
‘til the end of the week. Once the reds ran out,
I met the bike’s owner in town.

My ass in that saddle felt like a hand in a glove.
The engine purred like a Maine Coon;
I went for a wind-in-my-hair ride– never thought
once about my how good my choices were.
Handed him the cash and drove home.
I already owned the leather– a black helmet
with a skull, my ensemble was complete.

Cocaine logic was the perfect solution for the building seas
of marital disaster: 30 one-hundred dollar bills in an envelope,
her name on it. Spend it any way you want, sweetie.
You might anticipate how that worked out.
I didn’t.

Name the year that was especially bad:
that’s the low water story of that summer.
I bumped bottom with that bike,
as off-course as Joe Hazelwood.
It took me years to realize
how lucky I was to miss the reef.

She put the money in the bank.

Weather Systems
published in Cirque Literary Journal, Winter, 2017

When we built the house
on the bluff near the river mouth,
I had no idea how exposed I’d be.

I didn’t realize the tradeoff for a view
was listening to gusts puff and rain
spit against bedroom window
in the early morning before a fish day.
I’d lie awake, listen to the first boats
leave the river, their drone rising
and falling as they’d slam into breaking
rollers built by the wind and tide.

The knowledge I was leaving in an hour or five
swirled over the bed– my own weather system
developing in the pre-dawn gloom,
each gust a fist in the pit of my stomach.

I’d roll against the edge of sleep,
toss blankets and pillows until
you’d awaken, turn to me,
whisper: You know you don’t have to go.

You’d rub my back until I’d float off,
‘til the alarm sent me out the door
jaw clenched, head down,
ball cap on tight.

Idle Dreams
published in the anthology Beer, Wine and Spirits, 2017

Imagine all the waters of the sea
somehow transformed magically:
and instead of salt-water brine,
the waves all were made of wine!
Port or red or chardonnay
would be the best feature of cove and bay...
gulfs of burgundy and seas of zin:
it's a world I could live within.

But this fantasy's not entirely clear:
I'd really rather see water turned to beer!
Rivers of bitters run to lakes of mead?
That'd be quite a sight indeed.
Imagine the foam we'd see in the lakes
as boat props churned malt in their wakes.
Oceans of lagers, weisens or stout -
we'd get depressed as the tide went out.

There's some advantages to this plan
that could come in handy for the average man:
What do think would unlock her heart?
Cook Inlet full of bock is a damn good start.
A creek full of amber is good for what “ales” you,
or a dip in a backyard pond of hoppy home brew.

I guess I'd be sad if this actually came true
'cause at day's end I wouldn't need a brew.
No, I'd rather share a drink, you see
with friends like you - after goin' to sea.
Tell stories and yarns deep into the night
and shake 'em and stir 'em til we get it right!

But mixed drinks are for different cheer -
right now it's time for another beer.

Sextant
~ for John Bird, inventor, astronomer, mathematician, 1757

published in Cirque Literary Journal, Summer Solstice, 2015

Stand at the rail, lift mystery to eye
(you only need one to calculate latitude),

fix sun at solar noon, Polaris at apex,
or use the moon. Dance with her

on a darkening sea. You will know
where you stand as you float. How many

fathoms lie beneath your feet? The watch
you started will indeed end. Salt air dries in

your nostrils. The ship’s bell rings once, twice,
eight times; rolls over the waves, across lines of

demarcation. We engrave our names on iron
gongs. There is irony in yours, Bird – you who gifted

navigated flight to those who couldn’t sense it
internally, so we might find our mathematic,

feathered way. Wings spread, we hold course
in an oak and brass instrument. Adjust

for error, for the height of eye above sea level.
Or was it heart? Be sure to add the distance from

surface to the deck – include thickness of your boots.
Pluck a star from the sky. Place it on mirrored

horizon, day or night, you will know
where you are, while the rest of us

are left with only enough angle to see water.

Flash in the Distance
published in the 2015 FISH anthology, Bantry, Ireland, 2015

I am from gillnetters: from the Skookum Too and Veronika K.
I am boats floating a night sea, raindrop circles on the back of a wave.

I am from salmon slime, flake ice, scales and gurry.

I am hissing stick rips, glassy seas,
wild-horse, white-maned wave stampedes.

I am waterhaul and roundhaul, radio fish
and sunken nets; clatters, splashers,
nudgers, jerkers, nothing much
and better get over here right away.

I am from beer on the back deck,
baseball caps, flotation vests and rubber boots.

I am Grundens, XtraTufs, Vickies, and Stormy Seas.

I am where sunrise ignites the sea,
volcanoes vent over the island,
belugas rise to greet stars.

I am needles of rain on my cheeks,
salt spray on the windshield,
the shuddering slam of the hull.

I am a fire in the cabin, a blown fan belt,
oil in the bilge, catching a line from a tender for a tow.

I am a flash in the distance, whitecaps in the rip,
bow slicing an ocean swell,
foam in my wake.

Overboard
published in the ANchored in Deep Water FisherPoets anthology, 2014

It was a cannery truck, we said afterward.
Unreliable. It would stall when he slowed down.
He probably coasted through the stop sign.

Bone cancer doesn't relent, the doctors told her.
Go. Live. Enjoy the time you have left.
For five years she did exactly that: dove the Great Barrier Reef,
went to China. Fished the lake behind her cabin with her niece.
When she was done, she slipped away overnight.

It doesn't take much -
a gentle roll of the boat as the wake
passes; the brush of an elbow,
and the power drill, set too close to the edge,
tips and tumbles overboard.
You see it roll: watch without
moving, frozen in a dream.
It doesn't even complete a full circle
before it hits the water - that flashlight -
or 10-inch crescent wrench, or your cell phone
slipping out of your pocket as you bend down -
in the air before you know it.

It lands on the water's surface
like you land on the bed after a long day,
blankets fluffing, rising as they are displaced,
absorbing the impact and falling back again;
only the water receives and moves aside, and your knife,
the one you spent all those seasons sharpening,
the one you got in France years ago, on vacation - a gift
from the vendor who loved that you were a commercial fisherman
and insisted you take it – is suddenly out-of-reach,
beneath the surface, fading, getting smaller and dimmer
as it recedes from you and all your memories of it,
out of your grasp forever in an instant,

                                      §

like your friend who tipped over the edge after the struggle
to  hang on to the rail while the disease rolled under her,
or the buddy who was brushed away in the morning light
when a car crested the hill and elbowed him into the air
before he knew it  – a short fall into deep water.

Fisherpoem
published in Oregon Coast magazine, Jan./Feb., 2013

I slide into this crowded bar
   like I’d ease a boat into a slip:
the river is crowded tonight.
   Fisherpoets
ride these aisles like currents.
     Tying up to booths
or dropping anchors on barstools,
   they open journals like hatch covers:
     unsure of how the catch
                        compares.
How many brailers does the rest of the fleet
                                    have tonight?
                        How many pounds?
(Crap. Maybe I’ll wait to deliver until morning,
                        when no one else is watching.)

But morning comes and no one cares.
We drink beer, watch the show,
            and listen.
And damn, the stories fill the air like jumpers;
    words weave to catch them like nets hung deep,
ears cock for the sound of a splash
eyes narrow, looking for hits.

Then here comes the next set, and a poet picks up the microphone,
     like static over the radio, the bar chatter fades,
     and in slow-motion the words lift us, riding on the back of a swell:
            “The VHF just said a boat went down with all hands.”
            “The sunrise lit the mountaintops the color of salmon.”
            “…that halibut hook sunk deep into the side of his hand.”
            “The lights of the fleet looked as if the very stars had fallen to the ocean surface.”
“Pea soup.”
            “She went over when we weren’t lookin’…”

A slip of a boot on a wet deck
becomes a slip of the tongue,
and this place fills with salt water.

The speaker pauses,
turns off the key and walks away without a look.
   In a moment all hell will break loose,
and we’ll relive it again in the telling,
but as the story lands on the dock
            solid and hard,
we can sense the slightest change of the engine,
            feel the gentlest breeze,
            hear our own heart beat
                in the distance,
                in the waves.

                                                Astoria, December, 2000

Boat Puller
~ for Jim

published by Cirque Literary Journal, 2011

We were alone on the boat -
a green deckhand and a middle-aged Norwegian
riding emerald rollers sprinkled with drops of gold
in the late afternoon sun.
And though you were teaching me
how to get a salmon out of the bag
without popping the mesh,
    I was somewhere else:

    off the stern I saw myself
neck deep in Indiana, floundering in all those years
of not knowing who I was, or how to escape
who I had become; drowning in aching nights
spent hoping for the moment I might know
a way to set my feet upon a path of my own.

While I was picking fish with you,
stunned at the sight of the sea so near
and the mountains filling the western sky,
I thought of dry Midwestern cornfields,
and of lost, empty days filled with a wish to leave
    but nowhere to go.

You bent over a red to show me how to use a fish pick,
never realizing what was happening to me,
how you were stripping away the web of my past life,
    pulling me through to solid ground.

Fat City in Four Directions
for Jeannie Ouren

published in the Alaska Fisherman's Journal, 2005

                        North
We thought we’d all be highliners:
   Each trip out we had visions of plugging the boat.
   We would sink the gear, and tie floats to the cork line
   so we could get the net back on board after it filled with sockeye.
   We’d call a tender to off-load us while fresh flurries of hits
   frothed the water’s surface.
   We’d roundhaul the final set, deck loaded and the boat so low
   we’d toss the last of the catch into the cabin
   or put ‘em in net bags and drag ‘em to the bow to balance the load.
   We’d fly a broom from the rigging as we came in the river.

            We were on course to Fat City.

                        South
On the way, we bucked into stiff winds and big tides.
   We ran over each other’s gear in the glare of sun on steel gray waves,
   ended up dead in the water with web in the wheel.
   Engine alarms blared as we blew alternators and threw fan belts.
   We spent frantic hours jerry-rigging spare parts
   so we could stay on the grounds.
   We swore at our misfortune as reports of big catches and fresh hits
   spat frustration out of tinny deck speakers;
   we turned off the radio before it described any more fish calls
   we couldn’t get to.

   We stood adrift in the stern, watching
   even as the best catches of the season moved into the river.
   The rip sucked us into the sticks or the kelp,
   and a faulty solenoid or water in the fuel had us catching a line
   from the tender that towed us home empty.

                        East
Some days we’d just flat-out not find ‘em:
   move east when they showed on the west side
   stop running a mile short of where they’d pop up,
   or set a net length too far from the rip.
   Worse, they wouldn’t be there at all:
   we’d spend the day scratch fishing while radio fish filled imaginary nets
   and the hits weren’t the bunches we expected,
just singles, or only a surface show.
   The talk would turn to escapement policies of Fish and Game
   and how the biologists, politicians and guides were killing us.
   The only fish on board were headed for the freezer at home.

                        West
Some of us
   still weather low prices and less fish:
   In the cold morning dawn silhouettes of boats
   still glide past closed canneries and derelict docks.
   On board, skippers still hold a coffee mug in one hand
   and steer the boat down a darkened river with the other.
   Deckhands still coil lines in the stern and scan the sea for jumpers.

   But some of us put the boat on barrels and sold the permit.
   Cleaned out our lockers, packed the trailers
   and pulled away in a cloud of dust.
            No more waves to lift us.
   Instead we steer through the changing currents
   of foreign seas: oceans of commerce and business.
   We ride the ebb and swell of the job market,
   negotiating interviews like we used to quarter the boat
   through heavy weather.
   We still run hard, looking for jumpers.

            We still search for Fat City.

Mending Holes
~ for Lee

published in the Waterman’s Gazette, March 2001

I touched the past
even as it disappeared before me.
I placed my hands upon the backs of hours
               loaded heavy with gear,
and pushed them down an elevated boardwalk
              toward oblivion.

I mended holes in the days
with a needle and twine;
swatted mosquitoes like seconds
as the summers sped beneath me.
I painted coats of the present
              upon planks of history,
then years later spent months of chainsaws
   cutting them into pieces,
   bulldozing them onto the beach
where I lit the match that burned them to ashes.
              I even hoisted a beer in their honor.

I’ve seen compasses lose direction,
watched a fleet of seasons sink over the horizon;
               seen sail give way to power,
               wood give way to glass;
species disappear under thick coats of oil,
and lifestyles vanish beneath politicians’ dark coats.

I pulled decades of tradition onto shore,
put them on barrels
and walked away, leaving them to decay.
    Winter storms weakened them.
    The summer sun bleached them.
And I returned years later
to feel them crumble between my fingers.

What my eyes have forgotten
my hands remember:
               cool, wet cotton gloves,
               stiff, rough, manila line
       and the heavy chains of anchors
       covered in generations of mud.

§

I lean into the cool plastic of this buoy:
like seconds into hours
it gives before resisting,
               and reminds me
               that ebbing times,
with all the gear,
                work,
     and fish,
         are like a boat on a set in a strong tide:
         from on board all we see is the set;
                           but from anywhere else,
                            the boat and net grow smaller
               as they drift into the distance.