Skip to main content

Even God had Respect for a Wooden Boat, but It is in Tennessee, and it Won't Float

I did not know, when I was young,
what a beautiful place was
the Pacific Northwest.

I do recall, after having left
to begin graduate studies,
which corkscrewed me
through California--another gorgeous place--
and on to Arizona and Illinois
and settled for a settled time in Iowa,
of having written a poem which said
that always in my mind
there was a mountain.
That mountain was Mr. Rainier
and all its attendant and serious siblings.

This time,
more than sixty years since first leaving--
and never really returning
except for a pepper of visits--
it was as if everything was new and old
all over again.
Familiar things were surprises.

The Pacific Northwest is a conspiracy
of rock and rain, gravely soil and rain,
sun and wet moderation of temperatures,
of grass and moss and blackberries and rain.

Logged over, the hills which begin at the Sound
climb intently toward the place where even rock
cannot resist the pull of gravity,
and on top of every ramble and rubble
of rock running toward the sea,
the trees seize everything needed
to turn the world green and brown.

Once, on such a visit,
a logging truck, carrying its own trailer,
shook a thousand memories loose,
as piles of small logs did this time.

Moss claimed everything.
Everything recycled itself.


Since we were West Seattle near,
Stan and Becky offered,
and we delighted to help move their boat
from Lake Union to Everett.

There, where their boat lay,
a Norwegian skute adjusted its pores
to the water, again.
as beautiful as wood can become
when it goes to sea.

And across the way, Stan's boat,
its bottom newly painted
after a summer in Southeast Alaska,
dozed like the elegant beauty it is.

Its muscular old diesel engine
rumbled into life, comfortable in its role
of power and ballast at once,
something like a string bass
at the bottom of a satisfying song.

We drifted like kids going nowhere
while the boats ahead of us
took their turns easing down to sea level.
Then we, all alone in the lock,
went where the fresh waters go at last.

It was a lazy August day on the Sound,
mid-week, with scarcely anything to watch for
except a lazy drifting log; not even sea gulls
curious enough to sail by, hoping for bait.

Mari mused.
Stan considered.
I attended to a beer.

In Everett,
bow thrusters made docking a delight.

Becky, who had driven the car
from Seattle to Everett, met us for lunch
at an almost perfect Marina restaurant.
"Cioppino", Becky said to the waiter.
"Cioppino."  "Cioppino."  "Cioppino."

We agreed.
We agreed again:
"That was wonderful Cioppino!"

The wine made harmony easy.
Almost like the alto in a satisfying song.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Nice to Run Into You Again

We do not see things in enormous time-frames.  We human beings are fairly new at figuring things out for ourselves.  For instance, some  people today still think of the earth as a newly created thing, perhaps ten thousand years old.  Earth is actually about four-and-a-half billion years old.   That is to say, the earth is 450,000 times older than the Adam and Eve story, and the universe is three times older than that! I recall first hearing that continents were slowly drifting around the earth, and that there quite likely had been several times when the continents were squeezed together.  But people could stand on the edge of their own continents, and not see Africa or Asia getting closer.  It took at least fifty years to figure things out. We called our continent something special. But sure enough, there have been numerous times during several-billion year history of the earth, when supercontinents formed, and eventually drifted off. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...
Post a Comment
Read more