Day Haul

 

Of Day Hauls

           

            for Joseph, my student, sophomore, Lubec, Maine

 

It’s a pier only punts

and dinghies can moor to

at the slack tide watch its flat

as glass rise and decline

                                    wide

into the parting lips of

the bay cliffs be drawn down

that channeled throat

and out to the Atlantic.

Here

a magic waxing

moon hauls on each

wave, see how days

the table of the pier

deck

is categoric each eye

socket rub a soft clink

rise and rub fall along

the pier

piling.  Days

the deck is a gang-

way ramp on the ebb

watch the men in

December

in February

ready their rigging

and motor out

and tie off their punt at the

buoy

the gear glistening in

the moony ice.  Watch and wait.

The dock rises and falls.

Rises and falls.

The fog

blows off and crawls in

its own stray doggy life

and the howl and hunger

inside 

of it is bewitching

it is a poor woman’s

divination.  She sits in

its ghoulish humidity

in her wool and rag. 

His thermos is tucked

and chaff-rubbed

between the cleave of her

knees.  They’d said his boat

went full

under all hands

lost.  They said the drag

snagged.  They speculated

when he dropped gear

it was gone

in minutes. They said if he was in

the wheelhouse he could

not have heard the whine

or seen the wires

and line

get tight or the stern take on

a sudden thrust of sea.

They said before they went

out to search go home go home

to your baby

girl, your new wife.  So she

waits.  And the bay

is drained of men.  The bells

are still again in their brass.

His punt,

a bobber out there in the fog,

is nothing.  Or maybe it is part

of a conspiracy, like the tug

and rub

of her coat tails stuck in the spots

between the decking she sits

and waits on, fog and frost

congregating on her mouth

and jaw.