WEBVTT

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I'd like to read two
poems from Grand Manan

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Island in the Bay of Fundy.

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It's a working, fishing
island, about 2,500 residents.

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Been about 2,500
residents for 200 years;

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it doesn't go up or down.

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It's all dependent
on the fishery.

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And as you all may
know, commercial fishing

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is the highest risk
occupation on Earth.

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And the people who fish are
wise, and brave, and tough

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and go out in any condition.

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And even with the diminishing
results in the seas,

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I have great, great
admiration for the fishermen

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on this island.

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They're mostly men.

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Very few women are fish up
there, unlike in Alaska.

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But there also are deaths.

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And not every year,
but frequently enough,

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that it's part of the
landscape of the place,

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that boats go down
and people drown.

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And I wanted to write
a poem in honor of one

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of these young guys
who died at sea.

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And this poem was
written shortly

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after the death of the great
Irish poet, Seamus Heaney,

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and so it kind of rips off
some gestures and language

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from Heaney.

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You might recognize
that in the poem, those

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of you who know his work.

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"The Drowned Man."

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"Some week when the
roof leaks and the cat

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has been carried off by the fox
when my brother's scans sparkle

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with lesions when someone hates
me for the good deed I've done

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and it's impossible
to sleep or wake up,

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I will return to the island
to see its blue and lavender

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rocks.

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I will stare at the
ocean a long time,

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thinking of the man lost at sea
who clung to a sheet of plywood

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after his fishing
boat went down,

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his jeans so heavy with water,
his hands so cold with cold

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that he had to let
go and go down.

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Trove of the fishers lost to the
deep, the holy seabed scattered

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with wrecks nothing but
bones and boots laid out

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on the scuttle ground after
the benthic gleaners have gone,

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the sad nets coming up
empty laden with such loss

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that his people can only
shake their heads and gear up

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for another day of work.

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Something of their
faith may come to me

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if I stare all day at the churn
and pull of fearsome tides,

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the tweeded surface of the bay.

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I'll know whatever I suffer
is small on the scale of what

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people are made to live through.

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A net of words holds
a place together

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and those who are
broken are lifted home."

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