| THE SAME BOATby R. S. Stewart THE SAME BOATThe contraption we still cling to has layers of catastrophe lower than the steeper ones we sought in our daily dreams, sailing or swimming safely to shore and out again, the thought of drowning as remote as the red horizon we knew would never reach us, a close crew, survivors of the seminal sort, the kind notorious for bearing good news, brandishing bravadoes, and so incautious of the vital sources, the power of the quiet lungs, the ears that affix themselves to the echoes of rescue across an ocean, more than a mass of mere water but a home of some kind, a coast we once climbed up on to, leaving our breathing apparatus behind us, meanwhile missing the different boat traveling on its long course through a foreign channel, the passengers waving and waving as some of us sank and stayed submerged, as some of us, longing for the surrender of our own silver surfaces, rose blue to our aquatic calling. THE MAIN STREAMThe stream of most magnitude flows out of a river bound for oceanic expanse. Who doesn’t know this, standing on a bank and wishing water were more abundant, disbelieving the story of seven seas? A stream begins as a trickle, widens and narrows, basis on the progress of rocks, rain, bends in the beds of earth, depth and height of cliffs and pools, the cataract of wet worlds, all of this so different from the precipice that tumbles over us, the spray in no furious rush to soak the earth with us, just mild persuasion to join a journey swiftly swept upstream. NERVE ENDINGSI’ve never seen a nerve except as a picture. I don’t know when they end or start or what they werebefore the name of nerve became central to what they do inside me. Anatomy has no appeal except when I feel askewand know that one or more of my nerves needs looking at. Nerves, I’ve heard, are made of something electric, a factI’ve never had the means to check. Someone close said once that bundles are what nerves are wrapped in and counting them all is futile. SOME POSSIBILITYThe care I took in the removal of error paid off well when lines were drawn to signal the sureness of sensibility, its spatial core more than mathematical, more even than metaphor packed in bulk, heavy in the sockets where surprises lurk and reappear in grandiose waves to jar sureness of the surface I’m still skating on. I’m hanging on tighter than past remembrance, since behind my mind I sense the sunken fear of some possibility that all, all is in error. INSERTIf it’s just an insert it’s no quick fix. Insertion’s laborious and no techniquecan outdo the blank of the page the page is sewn to. Flipping through, one has the urgeto paste and glue instead of using the staple for what it’s for. On a big spread tablestacks pile up at twice their weight, and slips of paper aren’t their brightest white.Corrections are apt to add to the flyer’s flaw but if nobody’s glancing who else is noticing howlike an angel Hamlet says man is in action a piece of work left and anxious to insert. About the Author: R. S. Stewart is a native Oregonian who taught English at Christopher Newport College (now University) of the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where he also directed two seasons of plays. Three of his own plays have received staged readings at Oregon theatres. His poems have been published in many journals in the U. S. and Europe, among them Canary, Poetry Salzburg Review, 2 Bridges Review, The Same, Serving House Journal, The Journal (UK), the Avatar Review, PIF Magazine, Ink Sweat & Tears (UK), Brittle Star (UK), indicia, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and The Coachella Review. |
