Eight shiny months of AWOL in Truro —
it’s all I need — befriend
that surly new dark horse, Leo
and a seam of wrecked wharves,
a mattress, Hudson’s Bay wool for covers,
bluffs at the world’s lip, dunged-up, treacherous,
an OED and a pocket thesaurus, then
swan dive into the surf
of my youth, soiled and glorious;
chasing the core, no, the pip —
what grew into the truth.
My protagonist, Jim, he’ll be thin, reedy,
and potent as the pinner
he smoked on my very first page.
He’ll be a sinner. Squandered
his days in bush parties, cow-punching,
backseat lays in chassisless half-tons.
He’ll own a gun.
It’s all sketchy but framed, planned,
an escape route etched with a stick
in sand. I’ll admit the end is in doubt
but we’re not half-wits here, we’re survivalists —
you figure it out. A main character’s fate,
up here, is to saw off his days
in one of two ways: last match, unstruck,
dead-frozen, and whey-faced or racing
to outrun the tidal bore of himself
and always, always only
slightly outpaced.