Backbone > Frankly Speaking

A Man at Gravesend
By Frank Crocitto . Illustration by Leslie Bender

I: The Setting

Once upon a dread-drenched day,
the fat world in its sweet time turning,
November put its downright foot down,
sheered off the last leaves, whatever was left,
and scattered the clouds like sheep before
the wet breath of the wolf. And by-the-by,
in the thick-necked, spectrum-scummed
waters of the Bay, under a weary sun,
a man washed up upon the rocks,
a still man, used-to-be-man, swirling
foam around his ears, face down,
lashed hand and foot by the snarling surf—
well, a might-have-been-man—rocked
childlike in the give and take of the tide,
till its turning left him, squandered him, slack,
cast off like a starfish, hugging
the brown, tar-smeared boulders
the city stacked there to fend off the surge
and sledge of the insomniac sea
upon a receding shoreline and slump seawall.

II: The Questions

Blasted, who was he? and his lost wind
where to? that once whistled in his windpipe,
plumped up his lungs (in his heart’s hollows
lisped the name which keeps escaping us)
that knew his true standing, his good, too,
what he stood for, stood up for, if anything,
should the earth cleave or hurricanoes come.
A nobody maybe, leaving notwithstanding his legacy of
loose threads, undotted i’s.
What a wake—so wide—of waste we leave.
Face down, done with, finished, who cares
now the notions he nursed or hopes
stroked, noble or niggard, or what lavender
dreaming drove him, did him in,
got those extremities milling and scrambling,
sent the bright blood in them beating
to the rhythm of his ambition?
Whicheverway, like we, the vain weather
puffed he whirled and posthaste
reached his wretched stone at Gravesend.

III: The Similarities

God, barely a blink ago,
a short ways south, at the shore, we rehearsed,
my hale friends and I, this deadman’s float.
Great fun, gasping under the summer sun.
That’s me now I see in the slick dark sea—
me here, me there, expiring everywhere.
My turn is coming, though it creep ever
so slowly, like rust, rot, growth,
imperceptibly—that’s how things happen here.
Yet the big hand reaches down regardless,
sweeping precious pieces off the board.
We, no matter our scheming separateness,
are shaped from the same sad star,
prone to the same stale dreams,
out on the freefall to forgetfulness,
sure we have no other home but here,
eager to hand over our heart’s hoard
to whatever comes glittering by, gladly,
willing to spend—expend—our dear light
scouring a dark room for a dark pearl,
till, shocked, we behold our blueprints
slipping beneath the bootblack waves.

IV: The Wrap-Up

Here come the cops, copters and all,
sirens shrieking, rooflights crackling;
rescue squad’s next, raring
to quick-kiss a corpse; then clattering,
with ladder and hose and live men dangling
off its flank, the free-wheeling firetruck
swings onto the scene. The trees step aside,
the onlookers, the laws. They’re all here—
authorities all, in uniform distress
at an incorrigible world so whacked with mishaps.
Over the seawall, down onto the rocks,
up they hoist him, haul him, by the armpits,
skidding the peabody on the slimy rocks.
Up he comes, limp, dripping, decorated
with the wild green weeds of the deep.
Pose him for the papers! Once more—big smile!
The catch of the day, the captains concur.
(Ah, whoever he was he came and he went
without complaint, nameless as a babe.)
There, they huddle, they scribble, they scram,
as the modest moon peering over the trees
spills a pale shimmer onto the back
of the sullen, sulking, insatiable sea.

V: The Prayer

O You, who smile behind the stars,
who hide yet seek me slyly in my own
bones’ marrow, mind me now,
grant me: irises to see past
the quaking crepe of death’s door,
the savvy that his hunchback shadow
is thrown to fire the brass of me to fiercely live,
tick by tick, spitting in the abyss,
as, grasping the name you gave me, the talisman,
I walk the dark soft waters home.