a sailing book

samuddo / ocean 2015

a sailing book copyright © 2015 by john martone

isbn 978-1-312-64343-7print copies available here

samuddo / ocean johnmartone@gmail.com

a cup-of appears in Otoliths 36. My thanks to Mark Young for his generosity to me and many other poets. I also thank John Steven-son and others at The Heron’s Nest for publishing work from this volume.

the poem’s dimensions

a sailing book

The Buddha said to Ananda and Vaidehi, “After you have accomplished the first contemplation, next practice the visualization of water. Envision the western region as entirely flooded by water. Then picture the water as clear and pure, and let this vision be distinctly perceived. Keep your thoughts from being distracted. after you have visualized the water, envision it becoming frozen. After you have visualized the ice as transparent to its depth, see it turning into beryl. When you have attained this vision, next imagine that the beryl ground shines brilliantly, inside and out, and that this ground is supported from below by columns which are made of diamond and the seven jewels and hung with gold-en banners. These columns have eight sides and eight corners, each side being adorned with a hundred jewels. Each jewel emits a thousand rays of light, each ray in turn having eight-four thousand colors. As they are reflected on the beryl ground, they look like a thousand kotis of suns, so dazzling that it is impossible to see them in detail. “On this beryl ground, golden paths intercross like a net of cords. The land is divided into areas made of one or the other of the seven jewels, so the partitions are quite distinct. Each jewel emits a flood of light in five hundred colors. The light appears in the shape of a flower or a star or the moon; suspended in the sky, it turns into a platform of light on which there are ten million pavilions made of a hundred jewels. Both sides of this platform are adorned with a hundred kotis of flowered banners and innumerable musical instruments. As eight pure breezes arise from the light and play the musical instruments, they proclaim the truths of suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and no-self. This is the visualizing of the water ... — Contemplation Sutra, 10

I called mother’s name as Namu Amida Butsu in my youthful mind.

— Hozen Seki

Rahula, develop meditation that is like water; for when you develop meditation that is like water, arisen agreeable and disagreeable contacts will not invade your mind and re-main. Just as people wash clean things and dirty things, excrement, urine, spittle, pus, and blood in water, and the water is not horrified, humiliated, and disgusted because of that, so too, develop meditation that is like water, arisen agreeable and disagreeable contacts will not invade your mind and remain. — The Greater Discourse of Advice to Rahula.

The path of easy practice is like a pleasant journey on water.

6

sailboat maststhose pine treesdrop their needles

7

rain writing

on herself

8

new sunfish sail unfolded fills his room

hundred-year-old leaky garage holds a sailboat

didn’t know it’s a living sail

before & after english wordssailboat sail

9

you strike a match & melt polypropylene rope’s bitter end

bowline sooner or later second nature

slips thru your fingers —

practicew/

a poly line

every line a mind of its own!

10

bits of shoreflit pastthe sail is white

Out of your hands —

Shoulder boat pierside and lower into lake. Then mast, sail, daggerboard, tiller & rudder, which you should have attached first of all. Flags stand out straight, pulling at their poles — gusting wind doesn’t let up to let you understand. No idea what he’s do-ing, fool sets out. An hour’s tumult. A moment’s. You’re finally an incompetent after all, drenched & shivering, talking to the boat now, that live one, living being. Everything happens outside yourself, who somehow return, with no trace of skill.

drifting — watching him tangle with sail gulls have it easy

o sailboat no longer needing sawhorses!

luffing sail

human speech

11

honestlydry your clothes on the line after sailing

12

he builds a model wooden ship to set beside his buddha

hearing cabinet’s glass door

his glass cabinet well-built

as sailboatinside

13

it rains he patches a sail

single-handed

rain from what sea

on the way there

autumn nightsbifocals rig a sloop

gale force 10 an antique sloop sails in the window

14

mainsail sheetbetween his teetha sometime spider

spiderling’s sailing lineputs you to shame

meeting halfway spiderling sailing to your boat

north wind every circlea great circle

15

hurry sailboat —he can feel amyloid plaques take shape

16

Are there not people who can spend hours watching the rain as it falls? I once read somewhere that three things could never be boring: passing clouds, dancing flames, and running water. They are not the only ones. ...

— Vito Dumas

out on the lake — knew this rain was coming

every sinew

sailing in rain

close-hauled fall leaves blow in a sailor’s face

don’t be dramatic —it’s an inch of rain in the boat

17

after that storm he stands on the dock & applauds

18

one last graybeardlibrary closes

turtles were struggling

from their eggs

when you woke

from that dream

sailing sloop

picture book

settle — of course —

a book of knots

19

a cup-of poems found in Francis Chichester’s Alone Across the Atlantic (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1961)

a weep at the forehatch

over my berth

20

1630 hrs

written over

a cup of tea

in a bag

which you hang

in thecup & pour

wateron

21

thank heaven & martin tickell for the trysail

take off my boots& trousers together

& put them on together next time

hullo —she’s tackedherself

& boxesthe compass again

22

now for a cup-of & position-fixing by radio beacons

found to my astonishment

yesterday was friday

23

dropped my barometertonight

& bust it an old friend

lost the redgash bucket overboard

looked very cocky sitting scarlet on the surface

sorry to see it go

24

knowing exactly whereis not so essential in the mid-Atlantic

a kettle flies across the cabin

no vital parts

washedover board

25

asafter all his bad decisions in life a bonsai cedargiven

}

under a blanket in a chair in his room still sailing

his sailboat on horses he repots a pine

no one inside

he biteshis lip

26

calmnot even his washline stirs

washlines close as you’ll get to a tall ship

windlessdays

practice knots

some sail —that dream catcher

snaggeda window blind

27

Your first step into the woods around this lake (& all the world’s woods surround this lake — all Siberia, Labrador wilds, all sequoias & Mekong jungle, Arran isle & Ise)

that constant chanting startles you, soundless, with every step farther, out of nowhere, naturally, with no intention on your part, calling you, the other’s soundlessness.

Acer, amitabha, betula, plantanus, nussa, carya, diospyros, cercis, quercus, maclura, lirioden-dron, cornus — all names revert to phonemes, then wind stirring leaf-fall this time of year, this season from serere — to sow — this homesickness, heimweh, malato di nostalgia, nho’ nha, a di đa. You look out over those waters.

Every sentient being has its own Buddha land. —Hozen Seki

hills around the lake areslower waves

wooden stepsabove the wavesrotten thru

you lose sight of the lake

in a deer skeleton

someone reaching up —another wave

hearing someone behind you —another wave

28

thinking of home

mari time

paintto scrapethere

onebrightday

boatyard keels bare to sun

29

crooked garagesailboat & tools paint cans — a cot

the trucks are gonethat williston park garage is gone

& uncles andrew & martywho worked there

enjoys his pasta after sailing

30

sailing — or drifting?farther

come to the centera white sail luffs

wanders around inside that house gone sailing

Homesick — sailboat shows you how to feel. Becalmed at center, just a breath of wind, sail luffing, eyes circle the circle shore. Ever since — even in — childhood thus — not here, thus come. How odd — Mendeleev-made & nothing more (than sunfish, squirrel, seagull) & Mendel-written from Cold Spring Harbor — a molecule. Do the orbitals sense loss on a lake smooth as this?

You’d nearly forgotten about the partial eclipse going on above — maybe the last of this life, this life. You look up at that fusion, that cure-all. You wanted to be on the lake for it, right at the center, and now at its greatest, the eclipse nothing another nimbus cloud couldn’t do, does now. There’s that wind — shadow to penumbra on this lake. Your own just passed.

31

nightfall lift your boat from the lake

never seen lake so still —whip-poor-will

built a cart to pull his sailboat o this world

nights there’s no life jacket

nights his window on-off — on-off

furled in darkness sail is bone-white

32

sailor’s myth (1958)

poured a cup of waterin the boy’s ear to set that butterfly free

are you a form

of lightin water

or of water in light —

really moving —bare feet hangover the gunnel

sailing in whitecaps amoebas & desmids flying too!

whitecaps are people too

sail-shape in shreds(whitecap)

an offering waves liftthe hull

33

square knotholding all this time

coming about coming about again

wind & gravity

you hike far out

at dusk a sailboat practices coming about

a bubble of windin your sail a bubble on the water

right handholds the tiller behind you

kinks come out of a rope dragged thru water

34

Not to be blown into reeds and fallen trees on south bank, just east of you, you cast off then paddle out before raising sail, but you’re on the wrong side of the boom — and suddenly everything’s a tangle — your cap gone and boat filling with water. You’re just where you didn’t want to be & were bound to wind up, a real fool. The only grace is that you’re in the wind’s shadow now. You bale away half a boatful and get things right. The mainsheet tied itself to your ankle and spiralled around the tiller, but you free yourself and out of the reeds, hanging up for a moment on the fallen tree, and then raise sail for a wild ride.

no one else sees a sailboat glide thru those branches

keep out —those reeds

out of a myth

35

beaufort scaleSky singing in pain, small boats should not go out, and you struggle to stand facing NNE. The water’s surface blows off in bedsheets. The skin of your face as well. The dock’s rise & fall underfoot unbalances you.

a heron flies into the galeon level wings

You’re here to watch & freeze as the lake does. The architecture appears — angular roofs & spume-flowers, lines of foam, nets of crushed water tangle in gusts, diatoms & desmids tumble in Hubble clouds, a million pavilions of a hundred jewels — can you see — there’s nothing of you in this wind blasting the truth of suffering, emptiness, impermanence & no-self. Poor fool — you’ll catch your death a cold.

36

the lake

in your mouth

that breeze

bearing

mainsheettiller tensioned

37

he leaves the deer half-skinned & saves you from drowning

finally

A stiff one, SW. Put in and you’re carried out, running with it, all the way out, and scarce-ly thinking you don’t like this lack of control capsize midlake in 40o water. Legs tangled in rigging (so many entanglements), when you reach up, pull down on the daggerboard to right the boat, you only drag youself under and get lungsful. Then, working free of those lines, you’re too weak to reach up so high again. A blue cirrus-streaked sky above. Water-logged clothes -- three layers for warmth -- suck you down, and that life-vest wants to slip off over your head. Shout. Shout, but you’re far out, and there isn’t another boat on the lake, or soul on shore. You’d been happy to have this world to yourself.

You make your way stern, clutch the inverted rudder — wind pushing boat & you farther out. Chin & nostrils above water how long. You push the thought out of mind that hands will let go. Beyond the dying/ what is there to do —

Legs kick thru bottomlessness, & nothing rises to hold you up. Forty minutes. Then one remains. There is one. And there is one. Elbows bent, hands clasped. Water is darker than ever thought; darkness has no substance out of the cradle, how that poem ends. Some-where a gas engine grinds. Arms reach under yours. An unseeable face comes close. You close your eyes and keep them closed for the light.

In another universe, your body drifts face down to shore. In this, you’re the first one the divers have brought back alive, lips blue, core 89o. You feel them cut thru layers of wa-ter-logged cocoon, those deadly clothes. A whole body shivers uncontrollably. Your glasses are gone, of all blessed things; leaving you to stagger tomorrow, half-sighted in a hospital hall.

38

november 9 after the capsize you sleep with a light on

halyardhis saline drip

they ask somewhat sadly — & you live alone

gunwaleshospital bedrails

dying of thirstreaching for an apple

39

sailors’ home everywhere you look buddha’s image

a buddha sitting so —binnacle

40

sail stitch after stitch into this wind —the fabric holds

cirrusclouds curl — thosebeckoning fingers

autumn leaves —how the skin can turn gold

yes there are boats in this mandala

41

lie down in your boat white sail — white cloudthe end

42