Most of these were originally published under the title, Poems of a Lone Voyage.  In rereading them for the first time in more than a decade, I’ve eliminated many and revised others. A few seem to have been prescient.


The two parts, ‘Longing’ and ‘Being’ were divided by November 2, 1974, the day I sailed from San Diego on my first attempt at Cape Horn.


The ‘Being’ part of my life ended on April 29, 2019, when I returned to San Diego, completing my sixth circumnavigation.


I have labeled the third part of my life ‘Dying’.  You can find more of that in two YouTube videos


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU-IbkwZFdY


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9UILrfAk9s


As I write this I am 78 years old and I like to believe that I am not yet used up. Perhaps I delude myself, but I expect I will still put myself to the test.  While dying I am still becoming.  I can always write prose.  Poetry comes on its own and I don’t know that I will ever write another poem.



Longing




                                       for years he drowned

                                       the voyage in his mind

                                       and wore the women

                                       like clothes of water


                                                                 1966




                                    leaves of men of leaves

                                    rustle in the wind

                                    and blow away.

                                    in my autumn mind

                                    I rake them with my thoughts

                                    into neat cerebral patterns

                                    that descend


                                    leaves of men of leaves

                                    lie on the cool green grass

                                    of clairvoyant glass

                                    breaking beneath my feet

                                    into neat cerebral patterns

                                    without end


                                    leaves of men of leaves

                                    fall from the fallen trees

                                    far from the falling trees

                                    catch in the falling breeze

                                    my mind deceives

                                    into neat cerebral patterns

                                    once again


                                                                 1967       




                                her laugher is so far from me

                                it does not seem I ever knew it

                                odd for I am not even sad

                                only tired of imagining


                                I spend my days beside the sea

                                waiting until I can be free

                                though now I doubt that can be

                                think of me


                                I am already dead

                                to everyone I knew

                                and every place I’ve been

                                I am already dead

                                think of me


                                some afternoon off Berkeley

                                as you sail across the bay

                                look down into the water

                                and think of me

                                I am not there

                                to think of me

                                and as you kiss him

                                think of me

                                did I love you

                                think of me


                                and though you never knew me

                                and though I am now surely dead

                                someday when I am deader

                                think of me in the evening

                                when you are alone and quiet

                                think of me


                                yet even as I ask it

                                I am somehow pleased to know

                                that I might as well ask sea gulls

                                eating fish contentedly

                                to think of me

             

                                                                     1967




                                 I’ve grown to like grey days

                                 days when the sky is low

                                 and cats’-paws lightly touch the water

                                 days when the south breeze is light

                                 and I can sit with silence on the gentle sloop


                                 it was a sunny day

                                 when my grandfather died

                                 we took him to the hospital the night before

                                 lung cancer

                        

                                 he died so badly though

                                 not in pain

                                 but weakness

                                 whimpering for more time

                                 for more life

                                 pitiful truly

                                 a child again

                                 among nurses

                                 probably kind

                                 but, after all,

                                 it is only a job to them

                         

                                 it must not be that way with me I vowed

                                 if chance does not kill me first

                                 one grey day when I am old

                                 but not too old

                                 --that is the trick:

                                 to give up a few good years to death--

                                 I will wait for a grey day

                                 when the sky is low

                                 and I am as calm as the wind

                                 a day like today

                                 with a slight breeze from the south

                                 I’ll cast off the mooring lines

                                 and ghost on down the bay


                                 for three days I’ll sail west

                                 and on the fourth, I’ll open the seacocks and drown

                                 alone, unknown, unburied, and I hope,  

                                 still calm


                                 romantic, you say, foolish and why?        

                                 you would not ask if you’d seen my grandfather

                                 die


                                                                    1972



                                                                              


Being




                                        Southern Ocean

                                        inhuman sea

                                        cold and comfortless

                                        as you should be


                                        the wind that would be

                                        is not

                                        without an albatross

                                        the ocean

                                        or me


                                        but what is a generation to an albatross

                                        and where do they go to die

                                        do their bones litter the ocean floor

                                        or do they sail on

                                        feathered wrecks

                                        stormtossed upon the waves


                                        the wind that is

                                        blows against my face

                                        brutally

                                        an indifferent lover

                                        blows into my skin

                                        enters my fingers

                                        flows through my body

                                        more essential than blood


                                                                    1975




                                        Iphidamas

                                            no one who has ever read the Iliad

                                            has remembered you

                                            until me

   

                                        raised by a loving family

                                        your father a king

                                        you married

                                        but left for the glorious war

                                        before you had lain with your bride

                                        and in your first combat

                                        Agamemnon killed you


                                        that is all


                                        Homer gave you perhaps twenty lines

                                        blew life into you

                                        marched you into battle

                                        had you slain

                                        meat butchered by heroes


                                        the first time I read the Iliad

                                        even I did not notice you

                                        but the second

                                        during my “honeymoon”

                                        absurd word

                                        in Chicago in 1962

                                        with a woman from whom I am long divorced

                                        your brief life made me wonder

                                        what happened to your virgin bride  

                                        how soon did she forget

                                        and you

                                            did you have time for regret before you died

                                            or was the thrusting sword too quick


                                        you could not know

                                        that Homer would sing of you

                                            however briefly

                                        and that in 3000 years

                                        I at last would be touched by your death


                                        but if you had known

                                        I wonder

                                        if that would have been enough


                                                                    1975




                                        I am thirty-three

                                        seventy days alone at sea

                                        four thousand miles from port

                                        boat damaged

                                        voyage abandoned

                                        Cape Horn unpassed

                                        dream unfulfilled


                                        I am thirty-three

                                        and I am becalmed


                                                                    1975




                                        Die alone, Jean Gau,

                                        as you lived

                                        the wild cells turning your body to water.

                                        Any return to the sea,

                                        even a cancerous death,

                                        is better than remaining ashore

                                        where there is no place

                                        for those of us who voyage alone


                                                                    1975




                                        consumed by my voracious dream

                                        and wanton storms that rage

                                        without, within


                                        innocent of hope

                                        surfeit of despair

                                        I heal myself


                                        for me, for now

                                        there can be no harbor

                                        not even you


                                                                    1975




                                        my silence

                                        is like glass blown by an apprentice

                                        flawed and cracked


                                        but now I have learned to form silence

                                        and next time I will do it right

                                        perfectly


                                                                    1975




Le Restaurant Gauguin


                                        Paul,

                                        perhaps you would be amused

                                        to know how well they remember you in Tahiti

                                        a street

                                        a museum

                                        a plaque where you first stepped ashore

                                        a school

                                        even Le Restaurant Gauguin

                                        --in one of the best hotels, of course--

                                        where if you were alive

                                        they would not let you in


                                                                    1976




Old Man with Blue Bicycle


                                frangipani

                                tiare, eight petaled star

                                canna

                                bougainvillea

                                flowers bloom on flowers

                                litter sidewalks

                                cover hillsides

                                even beneath the sea at Venus Point

                                fish are flowers to the reef


                                so all the more I noticed him, the old man

                                riding his bicycle along the waterfront

                                always riding, never walking

                                unshaven, wearing a battered felt cap,

                                ringing a bell angrily

                                stopping with a shy smile

                                to search trash cans

                                once, on a Sunday, he had a single loaf of bread

                                tucked under his left arm


                                Tahiti is not a place to be alone

                                and after a while I was not

                                but still I wondered about him

                                whenever I saw him

                                and wanted to speak

                                to ask what he did when not riding that blue bicycle

                                how he spent his nights

                                and came to be there


                                but my solitude was as great as his

                                and I convinced myself we spoke different languages

                                surely he was French

                                and always he looked frightened


                                on Maeva Beach

                                the young girls bloom


                                frangipani


                                                                    1976


(When In Cape Town, South Africa, for several months in 2002, I bought a  used bicycle to ride along the waterfront.  It was blue.)




Tahitian War Dead


                                        on the Avenue Bruat

                                        overhung by trees

                                        a stone monument

                                        to the Tahitians who died

                                        in what we once called

                                        The Great War


                                        what, I thought, could possibly have made

                                        you go so far to die

                                        how odd

                                        how truly foreign

                                        it all must have seemed

                                        after this

                                        Flanders’ fields

                                        and mud

                                        and death


                                        three weeks later

                                        I write these words alone at sea

                                        their names

                                        so carefully enscribed

                                        already forgotten

                                        how odd I ever asked

                                        I, too, a glory seeker


                                                                    1976




titles


                                        upstairs

                                        in a suburban house

                                        a boy steps back from a painting


                                        two flat planes:

                                        one brown--the desert?

                                        one orange--the sky?

                                        two geometric figures:

                                        one reclining triangles;

                                        one squat squares.

                                        diamond headed both,

                                        serpentine

                                        eyeless

                                        unspeaking

                                        unmoving,

                                        for a thousand years unmoved


                                        after a moment’s hesitation

                                        he leans forward

                                        and adds a yellow circle


                                        now there is only the title,

                                        he thinks.

                                        Adam and Eve?

                                        Otiose numens?

                                        Parents?


                                                                    1978




Suzanne’s poem



                                    harpooned whale or woman

                                       

                                        ghostlike white flesh

                                        stretched taut

                                        filled with sperm

                                        unmoving


                                                                    1978




departure


                                        judge a man, then, by that

                                        against which he must strive

                                        against what

                                        if not this soft night

                                        and the wind and sea

                                        against the myth

                                        he must become

                                        and his own will


                                        the ocean waits

                                        to measure or to slay me

                                        the ocean waits

                                        and I will sail

                                                                  

                                                                    1978




off Arnhem Land


                                        through the night

                                        on unseen wind

                                        and unseen waves

                                        I sail unseen


                                        sometimes

                                        in deserted coves

                                        I anchor

                                        unseen


                                        soon

                                        I will not be here

                                        to be unseen

                                        and the people ashore

                                        will not be here

                                        not to see me


                                                                    1981




the last island off Sumatra


                                                    islands passed

                                                    are women unloved


                                                                    1982




                                odd

                                the small signs

                                that mark the boundaries of love


                                the clashes of flesh

                                the sharing of gentle shores

                                the healing of sea wounds


                                all come down to

                                my buying a cassette of the Sibelius Violin Concerto

                                and the Valse Triste

                                to replace the one she took

                                when she left


                                                                    September 23, 1982




                                        a driver’s license

                                        a set of keys

                                        some small coins, green with age


                                        the police gave her

                                        what they took from his pockets


                                        a broken body

                                        in mid air

                                        falling

                                        broken

                                        before the fall


                                        he was her only son


                                        he was my only father


                                        she never spoke of him


                                        but when she died

                                        herself

                                        of cancer

                                        thirty-three years later

                                        I found them

                                        in her dresser drawer


                                        a driver’s license

                                        a set of keys

                                        and some small coins, green with age


                                                                        1982


                                                  

                                                            Ithaca, Illinois       


                                                   

                                               Ulysses sits

                                in a condominium

                                in Evanston, Illinois.

                                Ithaca Midwest.

                                Surrounded by flatlands

                                and empty husks of stunted corn.

                                Before a fire,

                                listening to music,

                                a crystal glass

                                to his left,

                                and contemplates the distant sea.


                                He holds the world in his mind.


                                He does not dream of his next voyage.

                                Dreams are for the young.

                                Ulysses sips smoke and plans.


                                “We owe the gods a death,”

                                some cried as they threw themselves

                                against the walls of Troy.

   

                                Ulysses does not agree.

                                He asked nothing of the gods

                                and owes them less.


                                Still death will come.


                                It should, he thinks.

                                That we have so little time

                                is our dignity.


                                The sea is in his glass.


                                                                        2012




                        The wind is whistling around our building.

                        The whales are migrating off San Diego.

                        The ocean waits.

                        Patient has two meanings.

                        Neither comes naturally to me.


                                                                        2013




Opua, New Zealand



                    I know these trees.

                    I know these hills.

                    I know this water.

                    I know this sky.

                    I know this light.


                    I will carry them with me.


                                                                      2016




To Nicholaus Copernicus


    nick

you did us no kindness

when you proved we are not the center of the universe               

easier to believe our lives had meaning then

harder now


still

it is better

to know

the truth



2016





                                                on pillow

                                                and bed sheets

                                                the scent of a woman

                                                who

                                                has left

                                                you


                                                           2022