poem

Chapman’s Piloting, Seamanship and Small Boat Handling

Was it your idea or mine

to spend one winter

evening each week side by

side in the high school

lunch room years before Power

Point or video

or your flagging heart gave one

last gasp, the room filled

with hopeful sailors soaking

up the arcana

like sponges, the Commodore

leaning into the

gale of our ignorance from

the flying bridge of

the varnished plywood lectern,

gripping the slanted

top like gunnels, epaulets

flat as carrier

decks while you took notes in your

crude block style and I

flipped through Chapman’s Piloting,

Seamanship and Small

Boat Handling searching for clues

on navigating

the uncharted water where

we bobbed, grasping for

flotsam in the wreckage, our

Mayday feint, every

man for himself, stark code of

the sea prevailing

as we drifted off, Crusoe

without his Friday. 

 

The Fossil Record

The Fossil Record

Some things never change, the angle of

the sun at precisely this time of the

day, for instance, on this particular

date in the heart of winter.  Provided

the day in question isn’t overcast,

some successor of mine will peer up this

staircase, right foot poised above the bottom

tread, humming absently, thinking of lunch

or dogs or the persistence of

ignorance in the world then pause,

his attention drawn by the small footprints

leading to the top, hugging the left side

beneath the bannister, each carefully

pressed into polyurethane, long cured,

a fossil record revealed by the ever

reliable sun and sheer happenstance. 

Maybe he’ll take a moment to speculate

on the owner of the stocking clad feet

commemorated here, running a

finger over a gritty imprint,

perhaps raising a hand to the back of

his neck, the hairs standing on end.  I’ll

gently point out the almost imperceptible

concavity left by the balls of the feet, as I

hover, unseen just over his right shoulder, and

note the effort required to place each step just so and

ask him to imagine, eyes closed, the moist

tearing sound of each foot pulled free, heel first,

from the newly finished wood.  An embarrassing

reverie of course, no less so because he won't

hear a word I say.  He’ll follow your path up and

out of sight, leaving me alone, grateful for winter

sunlight that falls just so and my failure to

repair these stairs, the ones you learned to take

in bounds, where I linger, peaceful vapor.   

 

Poem

Legacy

Clothes Make the Man, your slogan, although Laugh

And the World Laughs With You or If You Want

Something Done Right Do It Yourself are both

applicable.  You wouldn’t object to

First Impressions Count but might be chagrined

by The Man Who Has His Health Has It All. 

You Can’t Take It With You is true enough

judging by the contents of the closet

you left behind.  You Can’t Make A Silk Purse

Out Of A Sow’s Ear, your concise, pithy

fall back position from efforts to teach

me to dress for success.  The last straw may

have been the visit to Hughes and Hatcher,

your haberdasher of choice.  You searched the

racks for a smart sport coat suitable for

a nine year old while I gawked at the birds

and monkeys captive in the two story

glass terrarium at the center of

an orbit of slacks, shirts, suits and ties.  The

monkeys were nonchalant as they sized me

up, indifferent to aphorism, smug

beasts, naked, alive, swinging from the trees.