by Adam SassMy friend on the island has no use for me
But I visit him every day.
Encamped amid mounds of oyster shells
Inflatable furniture blown
from passing pleasure craft,
an idle scattering of
60s vintage pornography
carefully protected from
fog and seaspray in
waterproof plastic
envelopes, some now so old
as to be festooned with
puritanic barnacles,
A shortwave radio tuned to
shipping chatter and
Coast Guard boardings
He sits in a tar-flecked pink lawnchair
and watches the tide come in.
Seeking but not finding refuge
From a memory now sun-faded
I had rowed from island to island
across the vast shining bay.
How painful my shoulders,
my arms, my blistered hands
after a day’s rowing!
And each one I landed at
the same as the last,
rock upon rock, streaked
with gull guano,
the same dull grass
poking from the same
cracks and crevices,
all this quickly seen
from offshore so
that soon I no longer
bothered to land
only approached
closely enough to confirm
what I already knew,
until I came to his island.
That first day, I remember,
I missed the wave's best arc
And felt the boat sweep
sideways, half abreast,
A bit of the breaking crest
spilling over the stern
sloshing around my ankles
And I thought it might flip me
suck me under, tumble me
against barnacled rocks
sharp shoals and mussel beds
but instead skidded me up the beach
the wave giving a last flippant slap
to the boat's boards before
sliding back down the sand.
Taking the advice,
I pulled it further up,
well beyond the water's reach.
When I looked up I saw
he was laughing his ass off.
You almost missed that wave,
It's lucky you caught it,
Your timing's off, or you
weren't even trying.
Next time put yourself in the
right place to catch it
And you will not be out
there flailing your oars
trying to catch up.
Get it right there before it breaks
And it will do all the work for you
I should know, I'm lazy.
At first I thought I would entertain him
Pay for my intrusion with
Wit, wry observation,
News from the world,
And kept the air filled
with words, adding
ever more anxiously
to their buzzing swarm
as he sat in silence
looking over
my shoulder
Until at last
In a pause
While I regathered
my spent breath
he finally replied
as I’d been hoping
all along he would
so I would not have
to keep thinking and
thinking of the next
word and the next.
And he said,
You will probably take
this the wrong way
as that is the habit
of your sort but I am
telling you anyway since
that is the habit of
my sort.
Will you for God’s
sake stop being
so damn interesting
just for a moment
if that’s all you
can manage
though I’d prefer forever
if it’s not too much trouble.
I don’t care what
you read or heard or
ate or drank or stuck
your snout in and
what it reminded you of
or what year it was
whether good or bad
or who made it
or praised it
or called it worthy
but not so worthy
as the previous
of its kind,
(would you ever
want this said
of you?)
there is nothing
at all interesting
about you
being interesting
and I’d rather
you tried boring
for a change
because it would
suit us both better.
He did not look
at me once during
this speech but
continued to
stare resolutely
over my shoulder
and I said nothing
in reply, thinking
if he wants boring
then he can have it,
and so we sat there
in a silence that
grew less silent
the longer it lasted
and I heard a seal
barking on the other
side of the island
and the distant
claxon blast of a
train rolling down
the east shore
and the surf stopped
short by a rock
I knew loomed
broad-shouldered
behind me
and the prim
fussing chatter of
a black bird with a
long red beak
that probed the sands
for minute prey
and whose name,
I discovered,
I dearly wished
I knew.
There, he said,
that’s better.
See all that land there? he asked.
That's park land
Protected for my benefit.
Yours too, I guess.
But I was here first.
How long? I asked.
What’s the date
on that Playboy?
he asked. 1968.
Now you have some idea.
That’s a long time, I said.
Yes, but it’s just time.
Not to you, maybe,
but to me. Mere time.
Oh, I know how you look at me.
I'm the old islander,
full of histories,
seer and sage,
wanderer of the far lonely places
not made for your world,
seeing through its
many-veiled
madness from this
my remote stronghold.
Well I am no such thing, and it
gets tiresome to watch your eyes
glaze over in the thinking of it
when I am sitting right here and
it’s clear you prefer the me behind
your eyes to the me before them.
In fact I'd tell you to get the hell
off my island right now,
only as I made the mistake
of telling you before, it's
not mine to remove you from,
though I was here first.
So at the very least you
might stop looking at me
with that childish longing
as if I was a book
you'd like read to you
by grandma because you
can't be bothered to
read it yourself
out of your own
fantastic laziness.
Do not pretend I am not
just some afterthought
that became a sort of hobby
one day out of the lack of
anything else to do.
You are welcome to skulk
around here I suppose,
can't stop you anyway,
but do not pretend it was
some grand manifest destiny
brought you here because it wasn't.
Sure you can tell me all kinds of things,
(Here adopting a sneering backcountry drawl)
the ma who stewed roadkill for supper
the pa who wouldn't let up
with the hickory switch
back of the old shed
Or maybe even something more original,
Go on, surprise me
But I won't believe them
Because the ones you didn't make up
altogether you misremember altogether
and I wasn't there anyway was I?
But the tide is coming in
and coming in and that
is no story
no simulacrum,
no way.
Now have a clam,
that one there looks done.
Behind his encampment
a steep-sided ravine
sliced back into the hillside,
from which flowed a tiny stream
its mouth choked with
nettles, poison oak, burdock,
thistle and wild rose,
along with less punitive
varieties of plant life,
ferns, trillium, and laurel.
This narrow gulch led back
to his hermitage, as he called it,
a root-roofed cavern carved into
the streambank, to which he
retreated when unwanted visitors
appeared off his shores.
These included
school children
and their teachers,
if the teachers
weren’t worth
looking at,
young men
with large dogs,
ugly nudists
(the only kind
he’d ever seen),
anyone resembling
a prison escapee,
and park rangers.
None of whom
had yet found the courage
to penetrate the phalanx
of sharp and stinging
island flora that guarded
the ravine’s entrance.
And so he considered
himself safe back there,
though under no illusion
that it would last.
How do you stand it?
I asked. I never could.
It’s not so bad, the
pain is never boring,
never the same.
Take nettle and poison oak,
there’s a combination.
First it’s pure fire,
the nettles at work,
then over time it eases
into a long slow itch
that keeps you busy
for a week.
The idea is always worse
than the real thing,
and it’s the idea
that stops them
every time.
Even the rangers.
They’d rather pretend
I’m not here, and
when I’m back there,
I make it easy for them.
You didn’t hide when I came,
Why not? I asked.
It was too funny to miss.
You almost flipped your boat.
I wanted to see how it played out.
Well, how’s it playing out?
Not as funny. You’ve gotten
better at landing it.
I’m beginning to
wish you were a woman,
about 23, knows how
to fish, loves older men,
belongs in that magazine,
hates a messy camp.
Why are you here? he asked.
I burned my own house down
and my family in it.
Why are you here?
I stole 3 million dollars
from a company
that no longer exists.
Why are you here?
I witnessed a crime
and they want
to kill me for it.
Why are you here?
I have 10 pounds of
cocaine hidden under
that rock over there.
Why are you here?
I dug a hole and
came up on the wrong
side of the border.
Why are you here?
They said there was
work for me.
Why are you here?
I’ve come to steal
your porn.
Why are you here?
I threw a ball game.
Why are you here?
I threw a horse race.
Why are you here?
I skipped bail.
Why are you here?
Something I ate.
Why are you here?
I like crabs.
Why are you here?
I haven’t decided yet.
I thought so.
Every Sunday, he said,
if the wind was right,
he could hear the church bells
ringing in the city
and knew each one by its tone:
There is Old St. Mary’s
in Chinatown
and Peter and Paul
on Washington Square
and Grace Cathedral
prim on the hill
and the Presbys
who need a new bell
I think.
Some of my best friends
have gone to church,
he said, and I did not
begrudge them it.
It’s much easier than
making up your own
religion, which is what
everyone seems to do
these days.
If there was a church
here I might go it,
he said, Or not, if the
surf was too loud for the
bells to waken me.
Your best friends, I said,
Where are they now?
Dead, mostly, I think.
And me? I asked.
You? He laughed.
You are in the running.
Much as I loved it
his island had never seemed
remote enough to me,
all but in the shadow
of the great bridge
that tied the many-hilled
city to the nearer shore,
downwind of its cookpots,
fishing boats, coffee,
wine, crabs, creosote,
kettle corn and cologne.
Why live on an island
if it did not grant the
grand and stoic solitude
that seemed to me
the birthright
of the melancholic,
the misanthrope.
Why?
Because I like it this way.
There is more to see.
Girls on boats,
freighters,
aircraft carriers,
submarines,
lost causes,
human comedies.
The best things
wash ashore here.
There is always
something curious
drifting away
from that place.
Look at it –
it is one curious thing
on top of another
and eventually some of it
must blow my way.
It should be obvious to anyone
I'm in the right place.
The next day something
was different. The wind
had blown bit and pieces
of his camp all over the
shore. His lawn chair
overturned, a tarpaulin
engulfing a boulder
jellyfish-like, and
one of his magazines
drifting forlorn
in a tidepool
courting the cold embrace
of starfish and anemones.
I plucked it out and
presented it to him
ceremoniously, as if
it were a perfect pearl.
Aha, I was wondering where
she went, he said.
I knew there was a reason
I let you come around.
He was squatted
on the sand
staring at my boat.
It’s quite a mess out here today, I said.
Windstorm last night?
Yes, almost blew me in the bay.
Why don't you clean it up for me.
It will be good practice.
Practice for what? I asked.
For cleaning up your mess back there.
The one that keeps you coming out here
Hoping it will be gone when you get back.
But never is. You know the one.
I didn’t say anything. I will never say
anything to him again, I thought.
Well, what’s keeping you? Get to work!
Why don't you clean it up yourself? I shouted.
Because I won't be here.
Oh? Where the hell will you be?
Back there. He pointed across the Bay
at the hazy hills to the East.
And how are you getting there?
Do you expect me to give you a ride?
No, I told you, you’re staying to clean this all up.
You’re not making any sense, I said.
You never did.
And just as the last syllable
left my lips he sprang to his feet
crossed the short distance to my boat
with astonishing speed and
before I could even decide to follow
had shoved it back into the surf,
hopped aboard and begun rowing
with a strange maniacal grace
for the other shore.
Don’t tell me this isn’t what you wanted,
he called across the water.
Why else would you come here
again and again?
But don’t worry,
you won’t be lonely,
I’ll visit you every day.
