Poetry Porch 2: Poetry

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Frangipani Poems
by Richard Dey

Contents:

1. In an Eddy
2. At Anchor
3. In Fog
4. At Night
5. On Her Mooring
6. Hauling Out the Beetle
7. Taking Out the Mooring

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Note. Sailors traditionally talk to their boats, referring to and addressing them as women, and seeing in them certain human attributes. The beginnings of this anthropomorphism are lost in time. It seems likely, however, that the beauty and behavior of boats, along with the fact that sailors have been mostly men, and men without women for long periods of time, account for this. The practice persists today.

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In an Eddy
by Richard Dey

This is smart sailing, using
the eddy to our advantage,
isn’t it? Sailing the edge of
the channel, we take the eddy’s
swift countertide and go
some distance, or poke
the bows briefly into it
to keep from being swept
away. This eddy sailing’s
a local knowledge held close
to the heart. It’s almost magical
to those not in the know,
who see us glide against
the logic of buoys leaning
and go faster, often, than
wind could ever drive us.

But even on the windy bright
days, an eddy’s only good
for so long. Sooner or later
the tide will have its way.
And while it lets us go some
places freely, an eddy, with
its grip and whorl, keeps us
close-in by these shell-strewn,
rocky shallows and reminds me,
as if this were like loving,
how close we sometimes are,
Frangipani, to smashed stems.

(Copyright © 1996 Whitecap Brothers.)

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At Anchor
by Richard Dey

You, no doubt, would rather be
tacking and jibing, flirting with
the rush of wind and kicking up
your white heels again, strutting your stuff—

But there are times, Frangipani,
when all our sailing seems to come
to this swinging alone on plenty of scope
in a protected lee; when the sun

overhead and the breeze are warm,
and the osprey’s banking wing is more
arresting than the trim of sail;
when the horizon holds no claim.

It is perspective, a quiet knowing,
this distance from both the sea and shore.

(Copyright © 1996 Whitecap Brothers.)

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In Fog
by Richard Dey

I know the sun’s up there and not
that cold white disc only, knifing
in and out of the fog, ghostly.
I know there are real islands out
beyond these mud flats looking like islands,
that the air is clear, unremarked
by these groaning horns, damn clanging gongs.
I should have been an astronaut.

This fog is too much like that other
fog with its thick gray isolation,
its backward looking, unlifting shutdown.
And I thought we were clear of the land—
that love, like the wind, brought clarity.
We’re hard aground. Which way’s the tide?

(Copyright © 1996 Whitecap Brothers.)

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At Night
by Richard Dey

for Robby Robinson

I should know better than to try
to keep this scam up. No boat’s
a living thing or like a lover,
much less a spirit to bridle and ride.
No boat today has anything
to do with a tropical flower;
anything not nuts and bolts
and microchips is nonsense, clearly.

But how I see—with what sense of time
and expectation, at what cost,
and in which light—is clearly otherwise.
And this, in the windy dark, is what
the flasher now strikes: a bright, hard flowering
in this hard-running, tidal place.

(Copyright © 1996 Whitecap Brothers.)

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On Her Mooring
by Richard Dey

How does she fare in the pull and swing
of her tethered dancing? Might she break free?
Does the line chafe badly in its chock,
could the mooring drag?
And does the wind banter in her rigging,
the rush of current deride her painted hull?
Is there someone aboard, stealing her?
Or does she raise the sail herself,
take the darkened water as
a wild duck takes the September sky?

It’s ten o’clock and I close a book of stories
set in Berlin; am, in a disturbed way,
not unsatisfied. And turning out the light,
I listen to the damp wind sing darkly at my window.
Should I row out to her, my demimonde,
check that she’s all right? License,
nor bill of sale, nor premiums paid
ensure possession—not of anything or one.
All I know is where we’ve been.

(Copyright © 1996 Whitecap Brothers.)

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Hauling Out the Beetle
by Richard Dey

I thought I’d lost you off Southard’s Point until
I let the peak halyard go and scandalized
the main. What wind! And just our luck to have
it drive your bows nearly under the tide
running contrary to the wind, its salt
spray stinging and bitter cold. I could breathe in
the woodsmoke, though, see the trailer on
the asphalt ramp; I’d heard its black clattering.

This cotter pin confounds me every time,
as if you were afraid to face the shed;
but think of it as one long summer’s night
you’re sailing into, an evening out on the pale
sea sparkling with phosphorescence. Be grateful
you get this time out of the wind and tide.

(Copyright © 1996 Whitecap Brothers.)

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Taking Out the Mooring
by Richard Dey

for Chip Gillespie

It was a cold, late November day
and I was catching my breath, standing
on the shore, surrounded by
heavy limp chain, snarls of line,
and frozen shackles, the anchor
heavy and loose in the dinghy, flukes canted—
all of it dripping eel grass, mud-covered,
and looking like bones in an x-ray—

when a loon’s call came high out of the marsh,
downwind, over me. I looked out
toward where the boat and orange tide ball
had been and saw nothing
but her absence and mine from this earth,
and the wind on the water like breath.

(Copyright © 1996 Whitecap Brothers.)

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Most of these poems first appeared in Sail Magazine.

Harbor Fog---photograph by John Goldie

To read more poems by Richard Dey.
To read about Richard Dey.