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