patrick dixon, writer
poetry.fiction.memoir
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poetry


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.


​History Lesson

Published in Raven Chronicles, 2017
 

When you sort it out alone
you become weightless, 
at the mercy of whatever mean wind
rustles the corn.
 
You spend the time
holding your breath.
 
I drag out 
brittle photos, 
beaten journals,
bad poetry, 
 
words frown 
from decades past,     
surge at me out of a dark
I turned a long shoulder to,
so I thought.
 
I fill with water 
that rises
to a boil.
 
Remember?
 
Of course.
Long nights 
under the bed
with dust-ball spiders;
behind a locked door –
flies buzzing the window;
scramble to a basement corner –
dirt floors and crumbled masonry,
where a shadow walks past the crack
at the top of the stairs.


Gorgeous Mistake

 Published in Word Peace, 2017
 
​
When they write the history
of humanity in the Last Scrolls,
what will be declared 
the turning point 
of our gorgeous mistake?
 
Will it be when Science,
that explorer who 
puzzled the stars,
split the atom, 
rode ahead shouting 
Look! while outstripping 
our ability to keep 
a guiding hand
on the reins?
 
Or will the blame fall
on the flitting bird of our
curious talent to continually
look the other way?
 
Perhaps it was the moment 
we handed salvation 
to priests, imams, 
holy men with bowed 
heads, our hands open
in petition: Please, 
take this burden –
define the path
of crusade and jihad
for the rest of us.
 
Or was it the line crossed when
we granted power to shadows:
those who deceived the best, 
had the most, spread butter 
on the lies so they would taste better?
 
They don’t, you know.
Ask the frogs, belly-up in the water,
Sperm whales, mouths overflowing plastic,
or the delicate white bones of passenger pigeons. 
 
The bees will tell you. They’re busy
these days impersonating canaries.



Flight Plan
Published in Claudius Speaks, 2017
 
​
We repaired the fence today
after last night’s winds.
Been a lot of storms recently –
seems the election stirred things up.
 
We were working in the rain 
one minute, sun the next –
that’s spring around here – 
when a flock of geese flew over,
in the middle of what sounded 
like an argument.
 
The noise was so compelling 
we looked up, arms at our sides. 
Even as they bickered over policy 
about who was leading, what direction 
to take, what was best for the flock – 
they held their course, the ragged V 
of their formation kept its shape. 
 
But not one of them had a passport,  
green card or visa. They were flying 
through sovereign airspace with no 
flight plan, certain to land without 
permission, consume resources without 
paying a dime of tax, leaving behind feathers 
and goose shit for someone else to clean up.
 
Good thing it wasn’t hunting season. 
The migration itself pissed off half of us. 
The other half was richer because they were here.

It's Like This
Published in the Linden Ave. Journal, 2017

​

I
have come a long way
to point something out:
   I left my mother
at Memorial Hospital in Logansport, Indiana
64 years ago
         (and change).
It was her fourth separation;
   it was my first.
 
I spent the next 24 years
tripping through cornfields and back alleys,
smoking Marlboros, pumping gas, 
cooking fries in lard-coated burger joints
         part-time.
 
I ran my bow onto a gravel beach in Alaska, 
pewed salmon on blood-spattered boats
   summer after scaled summer.
One sunny day, thinking I was a spectator,
   I almost went fishing 
      during a strike.
  Years later,
I shut down the boat on a calm night, 
      surrounded by
         beluga whales swimming between 
reflected stars on a black ocean.
 
Mom died 42 years ago
         and I have lived thirteen years longer
  with her dead
than I lived while she was alive.
  “It’s like this,” she once said.

​
​Mazama

above Crater Lake, Oregon, 2016 
Published in Soul-Lit online journal, 2017

 
​
I stand, 65 years of packed baggage 
intact on the caldera rim while sun sets,
blazing fire above parched landscape:
August, and it hasn’t rained in months.
The snow is almost gone, melt drains
into pumiced slopes, reappears as waterfalls,
plunges to a lake bluer than autumn sky.
 
The planet rolls from waning light. I ride 
a dormant volcano, seven thousand feet 
above the sea, into darkness. Eight millennia 
have passed  since ancestors of Klamath Indians 
witnessed a battle of Gods create a crucible for 
the deepest lake in the land, a cradle for their home.
 
Dozens of stars appear above darkening water 
and silhouetted slopes. I adjust camera, eyes, attitude 
to embrace an unveiled Milky Way. Glowing cloud 
on a cloudless night, galaxy of stars – each a sun, 
planet or galaxy of its own. I gaze at ancient light, 
every dot radiated billions of years ago. My baggage 
spills on the ground like a meteor:  fleeting streak 
leaves lingering afterglow. No wonder this place 
is known for clarity.


 Mary
 Published in Soul-Lit online Journal, 2017

​
What if Mary 
was indeed the mother of God? What if she 
was standing on the corner this Sunday
like the woman I drove past, her cardboard sign
Kids and I Need Food,or the one she had last week:
Need $60 for rent? Is $60 what it takes to rent a manger 
for a month? A stable? A twenty-first century stall
lined with straw? How much more did she need for food?
 
No, she wasn’t pregnant. 
But what if Godwas already born, an infant 
in swaddling clothes, hungry, alone in the bushes 
behind mother Mary, tucked out-of-sight for fear of DSHS? 
What would happen if the state took away the Child of God
from her loving mother, and put her in the foster system?
What kind of God would that child grow up to be?
 
And where does that leave us? 
 
I wish I could say
I rolled down my window and handed her a dollar
or sixty. But I didn’t. I was in a rush to get to the store
before it got too crowded with Christians after church. 
Too embarrassed to look another Mother of God in the eye, 
I pretended to be a more conscientious driver than I am. 
I checked the traffic over her shoulder before speeding 
away, echoes of a crying child in my ears.



 Best Effort
 Published in Cirque Literary Journal, Winter Solstice, 2015
​
Flying through time at 70 mph, you,
my youngest son, ask, Of anyone
who lived, who would you pick
to sit with, have a conversation?
 
I can’t choose.
Socrates, Jack London, Einstein, Maya
Angelou come to mind. Hemingway.
Isaac Newton, we both agree, or any
of the minds on Cosmos– discuss stars
with Galileo or Carl Sagan. Human
rights with Rosa Parks.  MLK. Gandhi.
Overwhelmed, we drive on.
 
Later this evening, it lands:
I would talk with family: parents first, then
work back. Aren’t they the ones, all foibles
and faults, bad choices, bigotry, dishonesty,
filled past the brim with errors and meanness;
aren’t they the ones to sit across from, with
their knowledge now of death and life?
 
Ask them the hard question: What was the most
important thing? And hear the answer ring,
shattered crystal:
 
                        You. You were my best effort.


​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.

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


Overboard

 Published in Cirque Literary Journal, Winter Solstice, 2011

"It was a cannery truck, after all," we said afterward,
"Unreliable. It stalled when he would bring it to a complete stop.
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 near her house 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 underneath; 
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
like a dream has materialized before you.
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 you see 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 fisherman
and insisted you take it – 
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 long 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. 



​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 
 
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.

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