How to Tie a Knot

If I eat a diet of rain and nuts, walk to the P.O.

in a loincloth, file for divorce from the world of matter,

say not-it! to the sea oats, not-it! to the sky

above the disheveled palms, not-it! to the white or green oyster boats

and the men on the bridge with their fishing rods

that resemble so many giant whiskers,

if I repeat this is not it, this is not why I'm waiting here,

will I fill the universe with all that is not-it

and allow myself to grow very still in the center of

this fishing town in winter? Will I look out past the cat

sleeping in the windowsill and say not-it! garbage can,

not-it! Long's Video Store, until I happen upon what

is not not-it? Will I wake up and BEHOLD!

the "actual," the "real," the "awe-thentic," the IS?

Instead I walk down the Island Quicky, take a pound

of bait shrimp in an ice-filled baggie, then walk to the beach

to catch my dinner. Now waiting is the work

I'm waiting for. Now the sand crane dive-bombs the surf

of his own enlightenment because everything

is bait and lust and hard-up for supper.

I came out here to pare things down,

wanted to be wind, simple as sand, to hear each note

in the infinite orchestra of waves fizzling out

beneath the rotting dock at five o'clock in the afternoon

when the voice that I call I is a one-man boat

slapping toward the shore of a waning illusion.

Hello, waves of salty and epiphanic distance. Good day,

bird who will eventually

go blind from slamming headfirst into the water.

What do you say fat flounder out there

deep in your need, looking like sand speckled with shells,

lying so still you're hardly there, lungs lifting

with such small air, flesh both succulent and flakey

when baked with white wine, lemon and salt, your eyes

rolling toward their one want when the line jerks, and the reel

clicks, and the rod bends, and you give up

the ocean floor for a mouthful of land.

Source: Smote (Sarabande Books, 2015)