“Drowned in the Surf”
I walked down to the sea
I drowned, lost and lonely
I drowned, pulled out in the slipstream
Sunk down to the depths below
He used to stare out across the water, this prototypically masculine, pragmatic man, engaged in a moment… of poetry… more than a moment, really… hours sometimes, just watching the rhythm of the waves, the endless grey clouds.
I would see him and wonder what he was thinking, what metaphors were taking shape in his skull. As if a man in love with the ocean were not enough.
They say the North Atlantic is transplanted from the moon, that no earthly water could be so hungry for warmth. The water here, is liquid night, the collected corpses of thunderheads long past, every storm, every lost ship, every grieving widow churning just beneath the waves. To find beauty in this…
He left on a Sunday, straight from church. I watched the ship disappear. From a cold grey monster to a spot the size of my little fingernail, to a flicker of smoke on the horizon, to nothing.
I walked down to the sea
I drowned, lost and lonely
I drowned, pulled out in the slipstream
Sunk down to the depths below
I don’t remember the goodbye, honestly, only watching that ship melt away. I went home and made a pot of soup. Carrots, potatoes, a few small bits of pork. People were stronger in those days. Every evening, home from work, I would make dinner, maybe read the bible, maybe play the piano, maybe dance, soundlessly, my head on an invisible shoulder, over cold wooden planks.
This ocean is deceptively small. You can stand in the shadow of a lighthouse and see forever in all directions. But it’s not forever. It’s a few thousand square miles. I’ve never been much of an idealist, or much of a romantic. But it’s hard not to look, not to watch that horizon and see every far off whale or whitecap and lose a single breath.
The widows sit together at the tavern, every Sunday, just after church, deep in the building, away from the window that looks out over the water. I can’t join them, obviously, though sometimes I’d like to, as if trading sorrows with old women would prove something to me, as if sitting one table closer to the window had some deeper meaning.
But there are things more important than loss. And sadness, has never been the same as despair. I still set two places for dinner, but only prepare food for one. I smile at the thought of sharing a single bowl of soup, but always have the appetite to finish it myself.
We are all ships, disappearing. What matters is who waits for us.
And this may not be satisfying, but it is enough.
- Tetsuo Lucksted and F. James Bardozi
