Moments that choose us

Bangor Daily News, December 12, 1983, page 5

Mount Desert Rock — 25 nautical miles offshore

December gale broke down lobster boat adrift in the Gulf of Maine

Jaysus Benjoy, you see what they wrote in the paper 12 foot seas, bunch of gibrones, frigging waves higher’n the radio mast for chrissakes They had it gusting up up to 60 60 in Sou’west Harbor, we was offshore

We was

another territory out there plenty the reporter didn’t say but if you ain’t been there

Ain’t that the truth ain’t been further than the end of the dock whatta they know Bobbing, my fuckin’ dyin’ eye Jesus bobbing

that winter, drinking rum and coke in the Seawall parking lot watching the tide ebb over Long Ledge, sky and sea merging the way they do, so that infinity don’t seem so far away, shaping memory, weaving the tale but, we was there

Now, forty-one years on remembering, what wasn’t said

gusts over 70 mph and 20 foot seas cold enough to ice up two lost souls, one pair of rubber gloves no power, no bilge pump bailing with plastic scoops crawling to the gunwale to empty five-gallon buckets. Under the full moon, wave fronts like cliffs glittering and jagged all that is human suddenly miniscule and fragile

Seems another life but, we are all there aboard this fragile ship

Captain Kirk faced it all those years of make believe and then he finally faced it IRL, the majesty of the void, boundless, endless, empty. He expected triumph, epiphany what he got was sorrow, profound and utter sorrow for the extreme fragility of this this tiny planet we call home, protected by a gauze of nothingness we call atmosphere and an invisible force we call gravity

all the triumph, all the glory every heartache, every sorrow spinning on a small blue sphere nested in a void, vast beyond comprehension it felt like a funeral, he said

He was there came home empty handed

all we care about all we will ever have Like me and Mick aboard a tiny ship

we outa be setting a sea anchor bailing ‘cause, no Coastie crew is coming ’cause in the end, it’s only us us and the moment we choose the moment that chooses us