3889. MEMORY

 MEMORY

I broke my sails on the quarter-panel, on

the dark wood where you'd entered your

name in knife-point, like some errant scrimshaw

on the jaw of a tree. The words had darkened

over time, yet I remembered the instant well.

You were as crazy drunk as I was, and we'd

just fallen down laughing. The hand that did

this work still smiles, years later, though you

are gone. The ghosts of these letters linger.

-

How difficult is it for a man like me to age and

pass on?  -  I'll let you know sometime, though

don't (please) keep waiting on the edge of your

seat. Hopefully, like these letters carved in wood,

I'll still be around for a while. I'll enrich even you,

in memory if not in presence. Well, anyway,

here I am and here I remain. All pleasure.

-

In the old log book that guy kept on this

boat, in the quarter cabin where he slept,

at the wheelhouse where he watched, 

somewhere like that, I remember being 

twenty with you, watching as he wrote his

notes. We wondered what he had to write

down. All the time, it seemed, latitude and

longitude, and all that dreary stuff. All we

then cared about was this : I knew your

equator, and at what point your blossoms 

bloomed, and you knew mine. Onward

and upward, each day, we sailed.