James Dickey: The Selected Poems

The Shark's Parlor

THE SHARK'S PARLOR Memory: I can take my head and strike it on a wall on Cumberland Island Where the night tide came crawling under the stairs came up the first Two or three steps and the cottage stood on poles all night With the sea sprawled under it as we dreamed of the great fin circling Under the bedroom floor. In daylight there was my first brassy taste of beer And Payton Ford and I came back from the Glynn County slaughterhouse With a bucket ofentrails and blood. We tied one end ofa hawser To a spindling porch pillar and rowed straight out of the house Three hundred yards into the vast front yard ofwindless blue water The rope outslithering its coil the two-gallon jug stoppered and sealed With wax and a ten-foot chain leader a drop-forged shark hook nestling. We cast our blood on the waters the land blood easily passing For sea blood and we sat in it for a moment with the stain spreading Out from the boat sat in a new radiance in the pond ofblood in the sea Waiting for fins waiting to spill our guts also in the glowing water. We dumped the bucket, and baited the hook with a run-over collie pup. The jug Bobbed, trying to shake off the sun as a dog would shake off the sea. We rowed to the house feeling the same water lift the boat a new way, All the time seeing where we lived rise and dip with the oars. We tied up and sat down in rocking chairs, one eye or the other responding To the blue-eye wink of the jug. Payton got us a beer and we sat All morning sat there with blood on our minds the red mark out In the harbor slowly failing us then the house groaned the rope Sprang out of the water splinters flew we leapt from our chairs And grabbed the rope hauled did nothing the house coming subtly Apart all around us underfoot boards beginning to sparkle like sand With the glinting ofthe bright hidden parts of ten-year-old nails Pulling out the tarred poles we slept propped-up on leaning to sea As in land wind crabs scuttling from under the floor as we took turns about Two more porch pillars and looked out and saw something a fish-flash An almighty fin in trouble a moiling ofsecret forces a false start Ofwater a round wave growing: in the whole ofCumberland Sound the one ripple. Payton took offwithout a word I could not hold him either But clung to the rope anyway: it was the whole house bending Its nails that held whatever it was coming in a little and like a fool I took up the slack on my wrist. The rope drew gently jerked I lifted Clean off the porch and hit the water the same water it was in I felt in blue blazing terror at the bottom ofthe stairs and scrambled Back up looking desperately into the human house as deeply as I could Stopping my gaze before it went out the wire screen ofthe back door Stopped it on the thistled rattan the rugs I lay on and read On my mother's sewing basket with next winter's socks spilling from it The flimsy vacation furniture a bucktoothed picture ofmysel£ Payton came back with three men from a filling station and glanced at me Dripping water inexplicable then we all grabbed hold like a tug-of-war. We were gaining a little from us a cry went up from everywhere People came running. Behind us the house filled with men and boys. On the third step from the sea I took my place looking down the rope Going into the ocean, humming and shaking offdrops. A houseful Ofpeople put their backs into it going up the steps from me Into the living room through the kitchen down the back stairs Up and over a hill ofsand across a dust road and onto a raised field Ofdunes we were gaining the rope in my hands began to be wet With deeper water all other haulers retreated through the house But Payton and I on the stairs drawing hand over hand on our blood Drawing into existence by the nose a huge body becoming A hammerhead rolling in beery shadows and I began to let up But the rope still strained behind me...