A Sail to Great Island

For Sam

30 For Sam I wish you’d remembered to zip your shorts when you walked to the other side of the pool to tell me: A man said “I have good news and bad news. First do you want to hear the good news?” And the man says “My wife is leaving me.” Someone near me has an awful, hacking cough. Puddles on the pool deck. I wish you would put in your lower teeth. The ones you have are like pickets in a wrecked fence. Each smile startles me. “So what’s the bad news?” His thighs are thinner than some fat people’s arms. Like a flamingo he miraculously still walks on his thin legs. In the pool the slow swimmers drift like weeds, like clothing fallen overboard. The old ones cluster in club chairs, watching the water walkers. Is he depressed because he can’t remember? Or is his memory faltering because he’s depressed? This is not yet an elegy. So many creases coming from the eyes. “The bad news?” He carries the joke to me like water cupped in his hands. Oh Sam, I know the punch line. How you tripped on the stairs and your wife of fifty years shrieked, as though you’d fallen from a train. The eyes seem clear. “The bad news is . . .” Your arm skin is brown as a turkey drumstick. The bad news is that the only good news is a stay of bad news. “She changed her mind!” That’s the joke that fellow there told me. A momentary stay against confusion. Oh stay. Don’t wade across the pool. 31 This is not yet an elegy. When did you start flailing at net shots? How long before my thighs become as thin as yours in a room like this one with my wife losing her grip on her patience and a younger friend looking now at me and now away. ...