Rest in Peace
BEST FRIEND
Liam Rector
You sailed down
From Provincetown
And I was to meet you
In Key West. I’d never
Sailed. I dressed
In my best and flew
Down from Manhattan,
Where I had been feeling
Punishing failure
And reading Hart Crane.
I brought a robe
I intended to wear
When I jumped off
Our boat mid-sea. I never
Told you that,
Old friend, and I
Apologize now.
What if I had left you mid-ocean
To sail alone?
In our twenty-foot wooden
Thing with no motor
And a radio that didn’t
Work we barely made it
Through the initial storm.
In the Bahamas we
Were often stood
Free beers for being
As insane as we were,
Coming over those waters
With no motor, pure
Sailing like that, a bar
Of soap floating in the cauldron
Of the Bermuda Triangle,
Where motorized cigarette
Boats sped by at money-making
Speeds, running drugs to fill
American needs.
And on our way back
When we lost our rudder
You, former Eagle
Scout, first conscientious
Objector ever to leave
West Point, captain
Of the ski team, jumped
Over the stern
And fashioned out of oar
And thick rope the thing
That would see us to shore
Before we, becalmed,
Drifted off course
100 miles, 100 miles
Of boredom and sun. I snapped
A black and white photo
Of the sea to remind me
Of my boredom, its boredom.
We made it back
To America, hitting
Shore at Boca Raton,
Pulling in midst the boats
Of the very, very rich.
I lived to write this
And never jumped ship.
It was your kinship
Kept me going those years,
Times of ridiculous
Sailing, riotous beers.
Wives sailed by,
So many boats, and you soon
Left for Bangkok and its
Very distant coast.
Being young: being rich
Among inherited ruins.
(AGNI 61)Liam Rector's books of poems are American Prodigal and The Sorrow of Architecture. A book he co-edited with Tree Swenson, On the Poetry of Frank Bidart: Fastening the Voice to the Page, is forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press. Rector directs the graduate Writing Seminars at Bennington College. (4/2005)
