Doherty Crane

I've lived on the Jig my entire life
And I've never once seen the ocean

We're acquainted, though

I can feel its tides rise and ebb in in my blood, filtering through my organs and bones
I know its salt spray smattering my lips and its wind ripping at my hair

I know the dull clang of the buoys in the harbor at night
The canvas flags snapping in a stiff spring breeze
The jagged ice floes grinding and scraping against the rocks in the winter

I can read the sea's moods
My joints contracting and expanding like a coiled metal barometer
Alerting me to nor'easter and fair weather alike

I would have made such a good sailor if things had been different

Once when I was a boy, my parents sent me away to the mainland
Where patient nuns smelling of chalk and peppermint
And sometimes bourbon
Would guide my fingers
Over oceans of raised dots

But when evenings came I lay awake, floating in blackness, adrift
Drowning without my foghorn to guide me through the night

I only lasted a week

I cried all the way home on the ferry
My parents mistaking my tears for shame
It wasn't, though
It was profound relief at feeling the waves slap against the hull
And smelling the diesel fumes of the engine
And hearing the gulls shriek overhead

That was forty-four years ago

Now I spend my days on the porch mending fishermen's nets
And my nights by the window where the lighthouse's beam
Sweeps through the double darkness that surrounds me

I am anchored
I am home