Maybe the Greatest Praise Is Paying Attention

 

Going Out

Maybe the Greatest Praise
              Is Paying Attention to Cliches
 
the way my saying ‘you’re an old man
at 53' makes perfect sense 

and you say: ‘maybe you need 

to shut your yap' and I don't say

that back because you're licking

an old sore, you 

always have been, or ever 
since your father dropped dead
 
you were ten then and the train
with his remains left the station
 
without you.  what is it you’re up to
now all these years building
 
your bridges and then taking them
apart, sometimes plank by plank
 
sometimes in your murderous fury
each and neither predictable?  still
 
all those raw and live wires exposed
and no one knows coming or going
 
if they’ve touched you
off.  for the moment and for the sake
 
of this argument, I imagine you’re making do  
with a day’s worth of coffee and smokes
 
to go to the dock where you
open and close the hull of your boat
 
and the mouth and nose of your long-
dead pops.  don't ask me how i know

you do that or what it even means

but i bet it has to do with blood 

and the word of god and the faith you keep

when you set the boat to floating

and you don’t know if it will

(because all these years it's been sitting

in a shed's fink truss and i want to ask

you if i ever told you how apropos

that sounded, how we were all disposed

to tell those elaborate lies, keeping 

the truths absolutely untalked about but now 

i'm guessing

it's another conversation, right? ok

back to that drawing board) i left you at

the dock, i watch it float and keep on 

floating until you haul the rope in and take to

the deck and wheelhouse and put to go out 

looking for blowholes: porpoises

or right whales or a bob of seals.  out
and out and out and by jesus the boat holds
 

and your boot soles keep out the cold

between the bilge in the fiberglass skin 

and that unforgiving ocean you float in

(i'm kidding) on top of.  you’re not friends, 

you and the sea, but maybe you two have come

to an understanding and made a mature  

agreement: keep each crack
and leak within eyes and fingers
 
reach.  if you see it begin to seep and then tend it
immediately or make your peace

while the water seeps, maybe you'll be 

atoned though I hope not be

-cause like a teased and eager boy, 

once you’ve unzipped him...

remember?

well, you know how that old
story goes, don't you. still,
 
maybe today’s the day you’ll go to
bottom and won't be raised.  or maybe today’s
 
like yesterday: you’ll make it back
again with an empty pack of smokes

and between you and your coat something 

will be beaten against the dry deck of your bones

that makes a shape that can't be contained

or even (though you'll gurgle it) be named.