Rockport and Roses

by H. A. Holden

Step onto the fine smooth pegged oak deck.
Hand to halyard
and boom
and halyard
as I work my way to the prow
eye the bowsprit
knowing it is forbidden,
I sit easy on the bulkhead.
Halyards snap against the masts
and the timbers creak.
Fresh sea spray mists the air. I wait.
Finally the captain boards and we are under way.

Motoring gently from Rockport Harbor past the jetty
towards the shoals and the engine stops.

My heart races.
I stand, knees flexed,
regaining sea legs from my childhood.

The first mate and a crewman unlash the fore and aft sails.
Leaning hard back they hoist the sails.
Canvas flutters as the wind finds it
and suddenly snaps hard full.

The hull lurches forward.
The Appledore, a 56 foot schooner, sets out to sea.
Gaffs and boom are tied down and the mainsail is hoisted.
Again the snap of the wind-filled canvas
and another lunge forward upon the sea.
She sits about 9 feet into the swells as we glide out,
past the channel markers,
past the tiny shoals.
Out to open sea and the hull lists hard to port
sending a chill through the tourists aboard.
Not me. No, I stand firm, hand to mizzen I ride her well.

Grandpa Kennedy was a merchant marine out of Fall River.
He used to take me down to the sea
aboard frigates and schooners,
sailboats and trawlers.
I had sea legs by age five,
and a lust for the waves to match.
At forty-two, I still lay claim to the whitecaps offshore.
In his memory I cast roses on the waves,
deep pink sweet beach roses,
like the ones we'd pick for Grandma
as she sketched the harbor from the cliffs.
Looking at the cliffs now,
they seem less menacing, more welcoming.
"Clang" sounds the buoy as the cormorants skim the swells.
Off the starboard bow is the breakwater,
now white from the gulls and terns who nest there.
The lighthouses are automated now.
No laundry snaps in the wind from the porches,
no lady in an apron waves to us anymore.

Spray spits and splashes as we come about
hull at 45 degrees to the swells we ride.
Ride her that rides the sea.
Knees flexed, eyes front.
If we keep going we'd find Portugal.
If I keep sailing,
I won't need solid ground anymore.