After Sitting With Wyeth

After Sitting With Wyeth

We can see the tragic forming

hurricane and victim;

and a man comes like a cat

to visit by the colorless forest,

his blue hands stuttering welcome.

Richard Hugo

Resulting from Magnetic

Interference

Going back I notice the old potential

lover has lost almost a whole row

of teeth.  Before I see him

smile I say he looks just

the same.  It’s far away and

he hasn’t made it all the way

in to shore yet.  Tying off

their caulked and patched

bow I wonder how he’ll get to

shore, and if he’ll be pleased

seeing his yesterdays walk

ahead of his children today, the way

water may, in winter, walk on its

own cold hands and feet, before

the wind, before it’s entirely

ice, and is blown like sleeves

like pants legs, strings of hood…

I wonder, when he plunges

into the bait barrel where salt
and eyes and bent bodies of fry

look out of the grime like he might

look out, the bait-shed window

with greased ease.  He’ll pass

a few laughs with the raunchy old

men who flash their shriveled

eyes and lift their lids with their

empty glasses off the counter,

the felled bar their grandfather’s

grandfather flattened, planed

day after day in the warm winter

barn, and made it so to see his own

face rise up in the varnish gleam.

I want to say you look the same

sitting there when you get in

off the boat, after mooring it

in the wind, and I saw you saw me

watching you.  And maybe it's your

deft and careful hands that are
the same.  And  I saw you taking

the years off me too, the way the old

take clothes off, first the fumble
with the belt, the button, the fly, and then

the rush in without waiting because

who’s getting younger?  Listen, 

the water’s a shock, especially
at my age, and going under means being

struck a moment, and then stuck,

until the coal paces her glow in the brazier

and sets the simmer, when the load shifts in

and settles and has enough Pray Jesus glow

to hold through: God

you look good how you been  

it's been a long time, you aint
changed one Goddam Bit.