A visit from The Healing Muse: 'The Sailor's Hitch'

Deirdre Neilen, PhD (photo by Jim Howe)
Deirdre Neilen, PhD, shares a selection from Upstate‘s literary journal, “The Healing Muse,” every Sunday on “HealthLink on Air.” Neilen is the editor of the annual publication featuring fiction, poetry, essays and visual art focused on themes of medicine, illness, disability and healing. Read The Healing Muse Cafe Blog.
Today‘s selection is "The Sailor's Hitch," by Eric Machan Howd. Order your copy of “The Healing Muse” today.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: Eric Machan Howd teaches professional and technical writing at Ithaca College. His new collection of poetry, "Universal Monsters," has just come out from the Orchard Street Press. He sent us a beautiful celebration of a man's life, told through a series of nautical images. Here is "The Sailor's Hitch":
[00:00:21] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: The first time he came home
[00:00:22] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: from surgery he found it difficult
[00:00:24] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: to rise out of the waterbed. His stomach
[00:00:27] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: muscles, though tightly woven,
[00:00:29] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: were severed to get at what darkness
[00:00:32] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: was swimming inside of him, so he brought
[00:00:34] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: some old rope out of the cellar, looped
[00:00:37] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: one end around the post at the foot
[00:00:39] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: of the bed, and formed the other
[00:00:41] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: into a handle. Each morning, he'd pull
[00:00:44] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: himself up out of the mattress,
[00:00:47] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: far enough to swing his feet over the edge
[00:00:50] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: and push off toward the window, the fresh
[00:00:52] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: air of springtime, the distant smell of salt water.
[00:00:57] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: He grew up with sand between his toes, his soles
[00:01:00] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: hard callused from pounding beach
[00:01:02] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: and boardwalk. He tied himself
[00:01:05] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: to the tides and shore, to the silent
[00:01:07] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: father who returned home from war,
[00:01:10] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: to the tired mother who punished
[00:01:12] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: with her glance, to the beached whale
[00:01:14] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: of his youth that appeared above the fold
[00:01:17] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: of the Sunday issue
[00:01:18] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: of the Asbury Park Press,
[00:01:20] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: to anything that was anchored.
[00:01:23] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: He knew the best knot for every
[00:01:25] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: situation: the binding half-hitch,
[00:01:28] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: the fishing line's blood knot
[00:01:30] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: the secure icicle hitch, the strong water bowline. He knew
[00:01:35] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: how the barrel hitch was best
[00:01:36] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: for suspending objects, how the slip
[00:01:39] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: knot was not a noose, and how the monkey's
[00:01:42] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: fist needs to be stuffed into crevice to root
[00:01:45] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: the climber's line. He knew of pull
[00:01:48] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: and slack and broke his back
[00:01:50] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: on roof's edge hauling bundles
[00:01:52] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: of shingles from ground to pitch with tow line.
[00:01:57] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: He fished for the end of the rope with boat
[00:01:59] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: hook to pull his family to dock
[00:02:01] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: mooring after a day, swimming and steel
[00:02:04] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: gray Atlantic waters and hitched to the salty
[00:02:07] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: ends to the slip's corroded horn cleats.
[00:02:11] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: He eventually let his boat go
[00:02:13] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: and dug an in-ground pool, bought a water
[00:02:16] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: bed, and moved closer to Shark River
[00:02:18] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: Inlet, the place where grown-ups warned
[00:02:21] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: their children not to swim with tales
[00:02:23] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: of teeth, the whites of rolled back
[00:02:26] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: eyes, and breeding. He always wanted
[00:02:28] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: to see the darkness inside of the whale
[00:02:31] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: and regretted not using his pocket-knife
[00:02:33] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: to open the one he found on Bradley Beach
[00:02:35] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: as a child, to discover what was beneath skin
[00:02:39] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: and fat and muscle. By the time Hospice came,
[00:02:43] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: he had tied his rope to the living room recliner,
[00:02:47] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: and as he died he reached up
[00:02:49] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: as if to pull another rope we could not
[00:02:52] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: see -- to pull himself up to the ceiling
[00:02:55] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: as he cried Mommy, Daddy, and struggled
[00:02:58] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: to get closer, to pull himself toward the knot,
[00:03:02] Deirdre Neilen, PhD: hand over hand toward his darkness, his light.