Excerpt from beauport

by Kate Colby

The Sailor — Far — Far at Sea (1845)

The lonely but impeccably groomed
tar moons
over a miniature of his intended.

                         A square-rigger
                         off windward

                                         all spars and yards
                                         and pennants aflutter —

                                         I see love!

I see love and need you
to hear it: listen,
I did once love someone
who told me that

he and some other boys would climb onto a roof over Main Street and cast clam-baited hooks into the air, where the seagulls would catch and swallow them. The boys would then fly the gulls like kites over Main Street. The dying birds would have seen the harbor and returning trawlers, their compatriots swarming like flies over fish heads with eyes in them, fish tails, the dilapidated Manufactory

                                         contrails, line breaks
                                         in the sky, dawning
                                         discontinuous

                                         high over Eastern Point
                                         where they top the trees
                                         in privilege of the view

That’s love for you.

They feel something
holding lenses
to scorching insects,
collecting weapons,
throwing stars —

Sailor-Far-Far,
I hope this feeling
never goes away — this
is consummation, is
the look of time-lapsed
stars moving across a life, is
the megaphone through which
I see you

my love

says
means
also ends

you see
there is no sense
to this surface —
I need a legend.

§

On a thick September afternoon Sleeper picks his way through the rangy catbrier and bracken of Eastern Point. Rendered inflexible by late summer’s drought, thorns and twigs scratch at his arms and leave their tiny appendages clinging to his trousers. The sun slants through chaff and kicked-up grit. Almost-dead things zigzag his head.

At last, he picks through to the clearing at the edge of the cliff. The fishing boats are coming home under funnel clouds of seagulls. A shiftless breeze picks up and dispels the smell of brack and diesel, carries the sound of fledgling whitecaps. A late afternoon’s half moon rises over Magnolia. All that granite.

Sleeper plans to build here and only knows what he doesn’t want: the aquamarine undersides of ship captains’ overhangs. No breath of fresh air, his home must insufflate itself

                  follow a single
                  fan blade
                  until dizzy

                  suck cap to your lip
                  cup to your face

                                         feel the ring of it
                                                                       somewhere
                                                                       something
                                                                       tweeting
In the acute September
dusk, zigzagging bats,
blue sand and the moon
above other human
forms of illumination.

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