After Foreclosure

I am the stowaway

the captain tied to the deck

and tattooed blue,

head to toe,

just to remind the others

of half the shadow

of half of the whale.

Soon enough, we all learn

the fist is the uncle

of the heart,

and I am changing my name

to Baron of the Blue Sky,

to Blue Savior

I believe words

have a mouth

with sharp teeth.

I am learning

how gently to lift them.

What if we all traced

checker boards

into the silt

with the heels of our shoes?

The whole shore

a tapestry of boxes.

What if we said King me?

King me.

Shadowland

Out here with a clam-rake,

I can slip out of the day

as easy as unbuttoning

a light blue shirt with my name

stitched in red cursive

above the chest pocket.

I can reach into my floating bucket,

open up a littleneck clam

and slide that sweet meat

to a space in my body

so protected, the light

has never touched it.

And that’s a strange thought—

that there are parts of me

I’ll never lay an eye to,

that I’ll never really know.

Because sometimes I’m tricked

into thinking I know everything.

But how is that possible when once

even this bay, Massachusetts,

and the whole country too,

was darkness on a map?

Not too terribly long ago

a candlelit cartographer might have written

Here be dragons, or Shadowland.

Here be a waterfall of sea

dropping into limitless nothing.

Which means, three years ago,

when I yelled back at my father,

I’m not a caveman,

he was right to reply,

You don’t know shit.

Anything I think I know

is like the houses here lining the cliffs:

they slouch, or are propped up on stilts

like chipped spinning plates.

And even my eyesight is a child

first learning to lie.

When I turn back to the shore,

anyone I think I know

is a stranger swirled

in a heat as thick as liquid.

And if the sun

makes them squint

just right, what am I

but the shadowed

shape of a person

quietly dividing in two?

All the Ships Tied in,

and the harbor lights

bleed together

like a heap

of burning tires.

He didn’t come back,

and I open up

a can of peanuts,

a Sprite, a silver

emergency blanket

to draw the heat

around me.

A small waltz

of Styrofoam cups

on the dock.

The gulls still alight

on the pilings, but now

their throat-sick squawks,

away from shore,

sound like mourning.

Still, it’s nothing

like mourning to them.