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

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

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...
Post a Comment
Read more