I
Off Crane’s Neck the sun
reaches a few feet down
into the dark water,
but what it is you’re after
feeds at the bottom
below the reach of your anchor.
Your heavy-test line
plummets with its lead sinkers
down deeper than Twain ever
marked the depth of his river,
and strikes sand
with a slight thud and shudder
you feel in your fingers.
The line bows out. The sinkers must
touch, lift, and touch again,
raising swirls of sand,
trailing smells of the squid
hooked higher on the line. You drift
in swells, as though the Sound
drew breath beneath you.
II
As you wait for shark, remember:
from here, crossing to Connecticut,
Walt Whitman saw poems,
watched the small boats troll
for striped bass, for blues
that bent rods double,
for porgies that shimmered
in the sun like coral.
But you’ve reached deeper,
down to where the sandshark cruises,
glides among the dunes like a shadow,
slashes anything that moves.
Its flesh, cut in strips,
will quiver, like a turtle’s, or snake’s.
Its eyes will stare through you, focus
beyond you. Its teeth
can snap the neck off a bottle.
You’ll feel it strike,
hook itself, sweep your line
back and fourth under the boat.
III
Hold the line taught.
Reel the shark to surface.
Gaff its white abdomen.
Raise it to an oarlock.
Batter its head with a hammer.
Taste the blood that runs
from its gills, hack off its tail.
Draw your knife across its eyes.
You’ve done what can be done
to the snarling shark that still
moves like a dead snake until
the sun dies beyond the horizon.
Rip your hook from its gullet.
With both hands, hold the shark
above your head. Pray:
never again to fear the dark
sea’s depths. Pray: never to fear
yourself. Pray: never to fear love.
When you lift it back to water
the shark will swim away.
Comments on this entry are closed.