Dumb,

Dumb,

the tip of my thumb is damaged enough

to refuse to grasp anything but a gross

fumble.  Even here, this pen a friend gifted

to me nearly twenty years ago is tricky

to grasp—it takes making an anchor,

shank and bill, stick out beyond the gunwale

and point up like a relic, blunt and rusted

and left out in the open salt air.  It’s enough some-

times to keep a balance and not stand up

in the boat, although everyone knows it can’t

be helped sometimes, especially if we’ve all

everyone of us in it been let down into the sea

after the first breach and we rub our hands

raw on the anchor and let the wind bring us

in closer than we’ve ever come to, and there

she’ll be blowing wet air up and closing

the hole on the top of her head like a third

eye.  Time was I’d’ve liked to ride along

beside and slip my fingers inside the coarse

ribbons of blubber along that blowhole—to go

in maybe up to my wrist whole hand open

closed open closed like a fin for swimming

for staying still.  Or maybe ball it

fist like but only so it would feel more

heartish, so, opening it, it would let in

blood enough to flood the chamber to pump it

up into the skill and wash over and along

the planks and skeins of fat that surround

her massive head, the viscous hollow

a grotto full of spermaceti.  I’d lie there,

trying to fathom why anyone would want

to light that on fire?  Isn’t it quite enough

to imagine nothing, like an unstriving

Zen priest who takes his bell and hammer

and walks into the woods to listen

to the trees speak back to him when he strikes

the bronze?  Isn’t it enough to stand under

the reconstructed skeleton of this whale

and want to reach out to touch his skull (he’d died

naturally they say on the stationary cards),

isn’t it enough to look into the well tacked

whale boat and say look at all that gear we go out

and into the whale world with, right down

to the knife hidden up under the plank near

the bow—bedded there I bet so when the harpooned

whale makes the lines buzz like electrified wire

and plunges down and down with all that barb

stuck like branches in her bark it’s either cut and let her

plunge to die on bottom or sound under with her,

while the gear rises up like a resurrection: rope, harpoon

shafts that want to bob but can’t with all their iron

and blood, dying men who can’t get out from

under it all and crawl and claw at nothing on nothing,

going numb and if they’re lucky they’ll maybe pull

though and later they’ll say, on paper, because

who will believe them, how it started

in their thumb and now it’s numb, and how when

no one is looking they put it in their mouth

to warm it and coax it back and all that happens

really is blood, and breathing and they both taste

like the same thing, they do, take my word for it.