Fisherman's Ditty

Goodbye to the little yard full of clover and crabgrass,

the sagging carport and the neighbors. Farewell to the rabbi

who ate nothing but pizza, to splitting wood in the driveway

on a portable stump, which the neighbors watched

from the shadows in back of their kitchens as I brought

the maul down on a life that was hardly a life at all

but a series of internal negotiations over which of us

put out the most orderly, incumbent trash of the week.

It was a life I asked for and loved and never knew why

it never seemed to be mine but a wave that washed over me,

my head full of voluptuous seaweed, shipwreck and foam.

Believe me, I love to lie here singing this fisherman's ditty,

a bit of rope in my hands for practicing my knots,

mind loosened by grog, whine of the squeezebox, wheeze

of the salts cantering out onto the deck under the stars.

Beneath the tune, unmistakable and huge, the sea's heave.