May 1, 2

Awakened at five thirty this morning, sun filtered through low fog, Alaska asleep while we walked in its broad quiet. Then went fishing. Lighting on the dock, there is a slope from the Spit lot down to the harbor, a grated metal ramp at quick decline. From the top I say five elderly men in matching camouflage on the Sorceress. So it goes. Five loose-lipped conservatives enchanted by the sound of their voices who discussed only three things (& I wish, I do, that I were exaggerating in employing the term ‘only’): hunting, fishing & those goddamn liberals. Subsets such as the specific merits of particular rifles or the finest bear hunt in Canada or the charity underlying African safaris or, well, anything pertaining to goddamn liberals were, of course, in no short supply. Men talking about hunting, I realize; regardless of the content of the tales, the impetus, the violence; is a matter of meaning-making, an empathic bridge, a means of fraternity. The interloper, I was quickly nicknamed “the professor,” though from time to time “the liberal” also signaled. When I was asked what it was I studied & was writing about, the silence that rang out after my reply was beautifully deafening. Made for an entertaining day, seven to four on the water. “There ought to be a poem about that damn cod, professor.” “Why don’t Obama write a damn poem about them boys in Iran?” “There once was a poet in Homer. La da di di da di di Gomer.” (All verbatim). That long afloat & I fired back repeatedly, & it ended up good-natured jibing in the end; dishing shit five ways, even still, gets you tired by the end of the day. I kind of liked being called the professor, though. Pulled in three halibut (though had to release one per the bag limit), four cod & a pollack. All in all, a successful introduction. A freezer full of fish.

Now home, sore as hell already, my body yet convinced it’s on the water, the room passing the periphery in waves, my equilibrium maladjusted. Hard work, halibut fishing on open ocean. But bona fide Alaskan, I suppose.

***

Thinking about writing the wedding leads me to obvious ruminations. The eye culls backwards, grasps after its evidences, substantiates its claims. I am remembering love this morning. That fervent, inebriate heart we carry into our youth & lose over & again, a willing & rhapsodic sacrifice. We grow, we fill out the contours of love, know it matured & in relation to countless contingencies. There is something, though, in the bombination of a young heart, or a heart, at least, young in its love. I carry autumn into its conjuring, somehow. The swirl of starlight, the gleaming breath paling the sky, sussuration of leaves, & everything, everything alive. A white body in a black lake, clipped ripple of reflected moonlight. A silver cloud. The shuffle of winging birds. The world charged with grandeur. The way a branch seems complicit, or a wave seems to lap against a shore at the right moment, the cicadas a chorus to lift & elevate the spirit. The abandon of it. Falling in love something like that thrumming youth, that surrender to a wilderness untrammeled. that self gaping open, that heart in its ineffable aching. The pulse of the world entire. Dickinson asked Higginson if her poems blew the top of his head off. Where heart’s heat rises—utter vulnerability, sheer & unfathomed. The care, the tender carefulness of loving perhaps its richest aspect. & how it thrills, the sustain of it in quick tremolo. Even its echo. Even me, here.