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Fat City - Middle Rip - Fisher Poem - Sinking - Mending Holes
North
We thought we’d all be highliners:
Each trip out we had visions of plugging the boat.
We would sink the gear,
and tie floats to the cork line so we could get net back on board
after it filled with sockeye.
We’d call a tender to off-load us while fresh flurries of hits
frothed the water’s surface.
We’d roundhaul the final set, deck loaded and the boat so low
we’d toss the last of the catch into the cabin
or put ‘em in net bags and drag ‘em to the bow to balance the load.
We’d fly a broom from the rigging as we came in the river.
We were on course to Fat City.
South
On the way, we bucked into a stiff wind and big tides.
We ran over each other’s gear in the glare of the sun on steel gray waves,
and ended up dead in the water with web in the wheel.
Engine alarms blared as we blew alternators and threw fan belts.
We spent frantic hours jerry-rigging spare parts so we could stay on the grounds.
We swore at our misfortune as reports of big catches and fresh hits
spat frustration out of tinny deck speakers;
and we finally turned off the radio before it described any more fish calls we couldn’t get to.
We stood adrift in the stern, watching
even as the best catches of the season moved into the river.
The rip sucked us into the sticks or the kelp,
and a faulty solenoid or water in the fuel had us catching a line
from the tender that would tow us home empty.
East
Some days we’d just flat-out not find ‘em:
move east when they showed on the west side
stop running a mile short of where they’d pop up,
or set a net length too far from the rip.
Worse yet, they wouldn’t be there at all:
we’d spend the day scratch fishing while radio fish would fill imaginary nets
and the hits weren’t the bunches we expected,
just singles, or only a surface show.
The talk would turn to escapement policies of Fish and Game
and how the biologists, politicians and guides were killing us.
The only fish on board were headed for the freezer at home.
West
some of us
still weather low prices and less fish:
in the cold morning dawn
silhouettes of boats still glide past closed canneries and derelict docks.
inside them, skippers still hold a coffee mug in one hand
and steer the boat down a darkened river with the other.
deckhands still coil lines in the stern and scan the sea for fish.
*
but some of us put the boat on barrels and sold the permit.
cleaned out our lockers, packed the trailers
and pulled away in a cloud of dust.
no more waves to lift us.
instead we steer through the changing currents
of foreign seas: oceans of commerce and business.
we ride the ebb and swell of the job market,
negotiating interviews like we used to quarter the boat through heavy weather.
we still run hard, looking for jumpers,
We still search for Fat City.
- Patrick S. Dixon, November 2003
It has been cloudy now
for a long, long while.
The sea is building.
The unexpected blow
always seems to come from the south,
and is always the worst
From shore you can’t see
the middle rip;
can’t tell how bad it is:
waves crashing in all directions at once,
moving mountains of green and gray.
And even if you were there
fighting the wheel to keep her headed in the right direction,
riding them up and over, throttle up and back,
watching more of what's next than what's now,
you couldn't tell whether the changing tide
would make it lay down or stir it up more.
I've run away from the middle rip more than once:
Turned around, saying,
"This is unfishable!"
Gritted my teeth and hung on to the wheel
as the boat came around in the trough,
trying to time it so the smallest wave was the one that hit,
watching it come, out the side window,
wishing the boat would turn faster
knowing it wouldn't...
hung on harder as the boat slammed over,
and the forks, knives, toothpaste
coffee pot, binoculars and magazines
slid to starboard in unison, then
launched crazily into the air and around the cabin.
I've even set my gear in the middle rip
when it was kicking up, saying,
"Ahh, it'll come down."
I've seen my deckhand hanging on, on the back deck,
as the boat heeled over at a 45-degree angle;
trying to let the net out
without a hangup or a backlash,
glancing over his shoulder at me with a look that asked
was I insane?
And I have stared dumbly out the cabin door back at him
and the towering waves mere feet behind him,
and wondered the same.
It's not so bad, fishing the middle rip,
but towing the gear in heavy weather depends upon your mettle
and your nerve;
and you know eventually you've got to pick up:
got to put on the oilskins and pull your hat on hard
so it doesn't blow off, and button the top button
no matter how tight.
The cool press of the fabric
against your neck reminds you of how much you wish
you didn't have to go out there into the wind and the rollers
and make the boat go stern first into them.
Still, you open the door, and the wind tries to take your breath away,
but you won't let it, and you hold on to the lifeline and dance
to the back deck on the back of a water-born bronco.
You pull your gloves on as you eye the seas from the stern of your boat
(your boat, your machine, full of its warmth and life and power,
yes, power to pull in all that net stretching into the grey unfriendly light
until you can't see it any longer), and your boat can get it all back, and more:
it can deliver you safely to home.
It's you and your boat against all this space,wind and water
and you come alive.
You slam your foot down on the treadle with vengeance and a
smile, and the air is cold, and the sea slaps the stern like
an insult, and drenches you in salt water, and you laugh and
you whoop and you yell the insult back at the sea!
When it blows,
standing upon the shore,
you can't see the middle rip;
you can't tell how bad it is
- Patrick S. Dixon, April 1989
I slide into this crowded bar
like I’d ease a boat into a slip:
the river is crowded tonight.
Fisherpoets
ride these aisles like currents.
Tying up to booths
or dropping anchors on barstools,
they open journals like hatch covers:
unsure of how the catch
compares.
How many brailers does the rest of the fleet
have tonight?
How many pounds?
(Shit. Maybe I’ll wait to deliver until morning,
when no one else is watching.)
But morning comes and no one cares.
We drink beer, watch the show,
and listen.
And damn, the stories fill the air like jumpers;
words weave to catch them like nets hung deep,
ears cock for the sound of a splash
eyes narrow, looking for hits.
Then here comes the next set, and a poet picks up the microphone ---
like static over the radio, the bar chatter fades,
and in slow-motion the words lift us, riding on the back of a swell:
“The VHF just said a boat went down with all hands.”
“The sunrise lit the mountaintops the color of salmon.”
“…that halibut hook sunk deep into the side of his hand!”
“The lights of the fleet looked as if the very stars had fallen to the ocean surface.”
“Pea soup!”
“She went over when we weren’t lookin’…”
A slip of a boot on a wet deck
becomes a slip of the tongue,
and this place fills with salt water.
The speaker pauses,
keys off the mike and walks away without a look.
In a moment all hell will break loose,
and we’ll relive it again in the telling,
but as the story lands on the deck
solid and hard,
we can sense the slightest change of the engine,
feel the gentlest breeze,
hear our own heart beat
in the distance,
in the waves.
- Patrick S. Dixon, 2000
I sit on solid ground
- gray December coffee shop -
gray concrete reflected
in the glass before me,
anchored, unmoving, steady.
Swirls on the muddy carpet here
remind me of the ocean
so far from me now.
The contrast between
frozen carpet waves
and the memory of motion of light
on restless windblown water
pulls me to the sea.
Where else to feel free on the planet?
Not a street in sight
fences, walls, stoplights and traffic
all stretch away until they become folded,
faded memories
of an artificial life.
Concrete has no salt smell.
Rooted, it cannot know water's motion,
has no sense of fluidity
other than sinking and the reluctant buoyancy
that keeps the fall from going too swiftly, or straight.
No dance upon the surface under its feet,
no jostle, creak, unplanned shift of weight and balance,
no cradle to fall into after a long day's work.
A building doesn't hum a tune to lull the senses
the way an engine does:
throbbing out a pulse through the hull,
through the skin and flesh of boat and man,
a drone, echoing into the depths,
deep into the bones.
Cinder blocks sit silent
unknowing of water's soft murmur
when the anchor is set and the engine quiet;
how even calm water has a voice
- ripples that lap against the hull -
reminders of how close the water is.
The water that is deep within me answers,
and I am pulled, sleeping, into the sea.
Unlike rock-hard mortar,
I float, and drift downward,
away from everything that is not of water;
and I know the defining moment of descent
absolutely:
I belong to the sea.
And for all that, when I awaken again,
and find myself in a coffee shop in gray December,
I feel like concrete
sinking.
- Patrick Dixon, December, 1999
I touched the past
even as it disappeared before me.
I placed my hands upon the backs of hours
loaded heavy with gear,
and pushed them down an elevated boardwalk
toward oblivion.
I mended holes into days
with a needle and twine;
swatted mosquitoes like seconds
as the summers sped beneath me.
I painted coats of the present
upon the planks of history,
then years later spent months of chainsaws cutting them into pieces
and bulldozing them into the beach
where I lit the match that burned them to ashes.
I even hoisted a beer in their honor.
I’ve seen compasses lose direction,
and watched an entire fleet of seasons sink over the horizon;
seen sail give way to power,
wood give way to glass;
species disappear under thick coats of oil,
and lifestyles vanish beneath politicians’ dark coats.
I pulled decades of tradition onto shore,
hoisted them on barrels
and walked away, leaving them to decay.
Winter storms weakened them.
The summer sun bleached them.
And I returned years later
to feel them crumble between my fingers.
What my eyes have forgotten
my hands remember:
cool, wet cotton gloves,
rough, stiff manila line
and the chains of anchors covered in generations of mud.
* * *
I lean into the cool plastic of this buoy:
like seconds into hours
it gives before resisting,
and reminds me
that ebbing times,
with all the gear,
work,
and fish,
are like a boat on a set in a strong tide:
from on board all I see is the set;
but from anywhere else,
the boat and net grow smaller
as they drift
into the distance.
- Patrick Dixon, January 22, 2001
