Bristol Bay: and Other Poems

Bristol Bay

14 Bristol Bay Prologue So many years go by before a thing We slept with every night, awakened To every day, begins to find its form in us. A life is nothing more than looking back To find the assurances to move ahead. Did I choose correctly, was I wrong? Fragments in the end. All the poor Human heart and brain can conjure From the sharp bite of each moment. Let me say to you—hold fast to your Lovers, take measure of their eyes, their breath, Look at the pulse racing blue in their wrist. You will forget it in the end. The long Walks with your dog, the buttery sun Falling across stones on a steep Face you prepare to climb—driftwood The next wave takes away. Going back to this place is like that. What I remember I’ll tell you. What I forget you’ll understand brings tears. Nothing is worse than forgetting. 15 1 Arrival Shucked oyster for a month to get The cash to buy rain gear and tickets From Seattle to Anchorage to Dillingham . . . Little plane tips out of the fog. Two others and me On board for a three month contract On the floating processor, All Alaskan. The Blue Zoo. An old body shipper From World War II with the freezer Converted from corpses to crab. Plane comes over scrub aspen, Touches down in a narrow strip Of beach at low tide, crunching shells, Wings digging sand as it waddles Across uneven stones. Pilot doesn’t care we Almost die. Neither do I. He takes off, gets air, rolls into the fog So thick I can hear the ocean But can’t see it until my feet are wet. There are noisy birds out of sight Making the sound of a cat with A bitten tail. There’s a moaning From somewhere, maybe another kind of Bird we don’t have where I live. Maybe my dead grandfather saying Son, go home while you can. 16 Someone has the good sense to light A rooter and I pull out a pint of Old Crow. We settle into the sand in the protection Of beach logs, shiver in our gear And exchange stories and vices. It’s Oddly serene, a few gulls, the muted Sea, the lost battles and victories. One of these guys is a skid row, down On his luck ex-NASCAR wheel changer, the other A former fast food manager fired for theft. I’m the poet and am more or less expected To say stuff like this: I rap on a rock To get their attention— “It is out of our powdered bones, our Trembling wasted flesh, our inarticulate Cries as the weight falls away that The sun rises and the new morning Begins like a curse still audible in a room Thousands of years after it’s shouted.” One guy spits chew in his cuff, the other Bogarts the bottle and the spliff. Someone Is running a chain saw somewhere. I hear It but can’t say where it’s coming from. I’m new to the ocean, did all my work So far on the ground or up in the air. Don’t know a boat when I hear it. But the other guys do—“must be our ride,” Says the thief inserting his tongue In the neck of the bottle for the last drop. 17 This beaten up double welded aluminum Skiff edges out of the sea. Two Harley Davidson guys with big hair, Tattoos and bigger arms jump out, Wade through the sizzling rip, Take a long look at the three of us. Guy says to me, “you’ll do—get in the boat. You two guys wait for the plane. You’re going home.” I get in the boat. They get in the boat. We disappear in the fog to the ones That remain. I feel right at home Except for the ocean which is dead flat And grey under the churning prop. I wish they’d turn the damn engine Off but then I guess we’d row. “Why’d you leave those guys,” I ask. “They was drinking,” one said. “This is a dry Ship.” “I was drinking too and far as I Know that ain’t a dry beach.” The one say, “yeah but you look Like the biggest asshole. It’ll take that To survive the Blue Zoo...