poetry
Best Effort
To be published in Cirque Literary Journal, Winter Solstice, 2015
To be 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
