I Always Go to Sea
as a Sailor

"With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts."
 – Melville, from Moby Dick











Day 3


You would not have done well a whaleman, Ishmael of today.
Not well at all.
Sense of adventure, you say? Does that mean
staving off the robocalls even on a sunday night?
Apps, new and old, pulse some days
along the shorelines of the phone, that is for sure,
but the basement camaraderie
doesn't engender quick action of the human kind.
And anyway, a whale? There are documentaries, of course.
Your most recent, of two fellows who took a year away
to kayak from grizzly country north
down along river banks
across bulbous shores as the fog shrouds increasingly engulfed them.
That drama quickened.
It became modern because the two men formed moods.
Over time we witness ridiculousness of choosing our dangers.
See the difference?
You would have walked along the potholed streets of New Bedford
as wiseass. Had to of.
Mind a swarm of buzzing fears.
Those ladies, formal dress, bonnets up, severe eyes,
broom by hands, might have watched you
with pack over your shoulder
and wondered what you were up to.
Mother.
Adventure.
Starts somewhere else.
Far off lands, mornings when young forced to chores
wherein dreams of islands of appear.
The space between the shovel in your hand
and what to become in years is adventure, vast mist of that dream,
propels you as ocean current
into worlds.
Look away from the eyes of any whale.
Pinpoint your finger on the car dash.
Hope it didn't snow too much and that the roads are clear.