WE went fishing out of Newport. Out of sight of land
for once in my life, I hooked my leg
onto the railing for protection, as the water
rolled green and sullen over the bow,
burying me to my waist in the wide Pacific.
The old man grew ill for the first time
in his long life, leaned out and puked,
and settled in the cabin. I poured coffee
with my knees jammed between the bunks, the world
halfway upside down, and hovered near him, anxious.
It's no big thing, he said. My turn has come
at last. Off the coast of Okinawa, when I was young,
me and one lieutenant were the only ones not sick
on the ship, with a whole crew down, and
four thousand sick Marines below.
We tied ourselves to the wheel and pulled,
first him and then me, back and forth, all night,
keeping her bow on to the waves. Some of them waves
reached right up to the bridge,
and that was eighty feet from water line.
We saw a destroyer lifted up, bow and stern.
She broke in the middle and went,
gone as if she never was, with a hundred
and eighty men.

                    The charter boys found their reef,
heaved anchor, and shut the engines down.

The old man sent me out to catch us both some fish
so not to waste our money, he said, but also,
said I to myself, so to leave him where he was,
somewhere else in time, honoring his sudden dead
and the man among living men that he had been.