We locked up the cars in North Sydney
and looked at the sea, grey and uninviting, nothing
like inland ponds or lakes that we knew. “You could sink forever,”
someone murmurs. Close cloud, the colour says bad mistake.
Something on the beach attracting gulls. Wreckage
and rock. The start or end of things,
who could say?
We went aboard the William Carson in the dark,
the wind’s kiss like a lost wife. Gulls on the waterfront
sheds looked away as we sailed. Nine or ten hours
the crossing if the weather holds, but we barely
get into the bar when the fun begins—
pitch and roll and
bang Jesus Christ the bow riding up
and hammering down we grab at anything,
lifted and dangled, our bodies hopeless, recognizing nothing
of this motion. Porpoising, boys, that’s what we calls it
here. Guaranteed, she’ll be a memorable night.
Who could call this heaving darkness home?
Who’d go out of his house in this for a game of hockey?
All night long a locker door slams shut like someone
raging, looking for the one way out. Up and
hold on the crest and
down with a bang and bang that
bloody door, then deep in the night a grinding, inches
from my ear, as if we were into a depth of animals. Nothing
but ice, my love, I hear a passing voice in the corridor, pans and a bit
of slob, we sees all we wants of that in the spring.