By Jim Lowell
Now the wind has swung
from Uncatena to Noman’s
and the trawlers are in Quick’s Hole
throbbing toward their haul.
On the deserted dock one gull
with one leg and one hungry eye
remembers a summer of bounty
when he snubbed crumbs.
Fred is in repose. His fingers
play his beard like a pan flute
while he awaits the Cuttyhunk ferry
whether it is Monday or Friday.
Donny is in the cab
of his barge-borne crane
lining up another piling
to be whaled into the muddy bottom.
On one trawler’s deck a young man
who only speaks Portuguese
is learning the names of things
he knows by heart, not by language.
Jim Lowell is a winter mainlander and summer Cuttyhunk poet whose
works have appeared in the Canadian Review of Literature, English,
Caribbean Writer, and elsewhere.
