Grappling

New River, Snead's Ferry, N.C., circa 1950

The sergeant sets the throttle: troll.

You're marines. You'll take turns with the hooks.
If we hook him and he surfaces
don't look at the colonel's eyes,
unless you want him watching you
the rest of your fucking lives.

      (...the colonel's bobbing, loon-wet head, nostrils
          gorged with algae...)

Rain for days. The estuarial gray's
gone toffee brown. The marshes' grass mats
decompose. Shellfish strain decay.

      (...squirrel rotting in the messhall's ceiling…
           sweet and sour soup...)

My first turn on the hooks I say,

We've caught a log.

The log's lurch settles in my gut.
It surfaces: threadbare, Goodyear.
A chopper whops overhead.

      (...he tasted it, till packed silt drove his teeth past
          grimace, tossed his SOS-ing tongue...)

The limb I'm hooked to now
peels from the trunk. It's small, but turns
like toweling in our wake.
Four mushrooms sprout:
fingers. Then, a thin black wrist,
a black bicep, armpit, some lat.

All I got is arm. A skinny black kid! Come about.

Throw it back!

       (...I relish gale surf, the rush to crackling rock...
           our rubber boat scrunching sand...)

The grapple picks
a piece of turquoise shirt
and pectoral.

Throw that back too.

He's only five feet down. Can I just dive?

       (... moonless trips across Trapp's Bay for heaps of
           crabs, hogs of beer, Snead's Ferry's hook...)

The sergeant's on the radio: Roger. Out.

Kid, this ain't your day.
Some smartass flyboy's found our man.
That's it. Stow that grapple in your lap.

Through outboard spray, I watch
the harnessed, swinging silhouette
rise into the olive bird.
The colonel's corpus leaves first-class.

       (...told our waitress, Twyla, that New River was
           oldest in America...she didn't bite.)

I coil the rope. My hands ooze blood.
I taste my finger: too much salt.
Ashore a crow rips gristle from a whelk.

{First published in The Southern Review, Spring 2001}

(the "next" paddle will take you to another poem by this author)