As a Man
Disorder is not the opposite of ease.
It is the shape ease takes
when no one is forcing a shape.
— t r a b o c c o
Rain.
Exhaustion.
The days gone from me.
The waves repeating until they had no meaning.
Wet.
Sand in my hair,
my teeth,
my eyes,
my blood.
I am the sea’s torn thing.
Tattered flesh.
Still lit.
I am.
I am.
A Note Before the Bottles
The voice has changed.
When I first washed up, I was still performing.
Even the quiet lines carried want.
I hear it now.
That voice is gone.
Not killed. Quieted.
What remains is the voice before the day begins.
Breath slow.
Body sore.
A man speaking because speech is what is left.
I grasp the spear.
I throw it at fish.
I sit in the sun.
That is the whole day.
The spear has weight.
The shaft is dark where my hand has darkened it.
Sweat runs the wood.
The blade catches orange from the sun.
When a fish is taken, it flashes once,
and the flash stays longer than the hunger.
This is how a man speaks
when he has stopped trying to be heard.
Read slow.
With the weight in.
First Bottle
I have been here long enough
to know three winds
and the hour the herons come.
The sending is the ceremony.
Fold the page.
Cork the glass.
Walk to the water.
Release.
Today the water listens.
The surface does not chop
when I step close.
It holds.
I will not stack the words into a tower
and hope the height impresses.
I have seen what towers do.
They fall.
And the men who build them
blame the ground.
Instead.
Here is a stone, warm from the sun.
Here is my breath, slower now.
Here is the salt on my lip.
Here is the ache in my shoulder.
The island taught me this:
A thing does not have to be solved
to be loved.
The shore does not solve the sea.
It meets it.
Over and over.
This bottle is recognition.
The tide may carry it to a hand
or carry it back to mine.
Nothing has to be done.
Acknowledgement is a balance
effort can not claim.
The herons are coming.
Three, low across the water.
I will stop writing.
The herons are better
than anything I could add.
I scribble
Here I am.
Return when you are ready.
Or don’t.
The tide is patient.
So am I.
Bottle
Floats
Away
— From the island.
From the rock.
From the same quiet.
Second Bottle, Returned Quieter
The wind passes over me
the same way it passes over everything.
Loneliness is smaller than weather.
The sun is not less ancient
because it reaches me alone.
The bottle came back.
Same green glass.
Same chipped mouth.
Same salt-dark cork.
Inside,
my own words,
damp at the edges.
Here I am...
They felt returned.
Not answered.
Returned.
That was enough.
I read them as footfall.
The sound of a man stepping
where the ground already was.
The men on some distant shore
do not understand
that here is not a location.
It is a permission.
And a man cannot win permission.
He can only stop losing it.
The opposite of noise
is not silence.
It is ease.
The herons will come
whether I name them or not.
I am returning a confirmation.
While it floats,
here I am.
— From the island.
Same quiet.
Same breath.
Still no tower.
Third Bottle, Lighter
Time passed.
I remained.
The health of the eye
seems to demand a horizon.
I never tire,
so long as I can see far enough.
The bottle came back lighter.
Here I am
had become
here we are.
The bottles are not a duet.
They are one man
walking the same beach
at different hours,
his footprints already changed by tide.
The day is a chorus.
A branch does not know
it is floating.
A fish does not thank the water.
A breath is always doing the breathing.
And the sun... it rises
it sets.
I have begun leaving the cork looser.
Not because I want the water in.
Because I trust the bottle
to know what it needs.
The herons came again.
Four this time.
I set the bottle in the water.
The sun paints its path
across the surface.
The path goes
where it goes.
A man who learns
to leave the cork loose
has already stopped drowning.
Go easy.
— From the same shore.
Lighter by one bottle.
Heavier by nothing.
Fourth Bottle, After Long Silence
I will not dress this one.
I miss a woman.
The scent.
Auburn hair brushed back.
The small glance
that belongs only to her.
I laugh when a tree bends in the wind
and I see a feminine figure in it.
The clouds can hold a smile,
the squint of a shy
and imagined woman in passing.
The body has been fed enough
to remember what it was made for.
It was not made only for the spear.
Just enough food.
Just enough water.
That the longing reaches more primal.
The ache.
And yet
there is peace.
God shows up in the sand,
in the fish,
in the spear
that cuts my hand
and feeds me.
I love the rain
the way I would love her
if she walked the beach tomorrow.
Longing and peace
sit on the same small shelf.
Neither leaves.
A man does not become himself
by removing wanting.
He becomes himself
when wanting can stay
without becoming hunger.
A man who has found the peace
and still reaches
is a different thing
than a man who has found the peace
and gone quiet.
The first one is alive in both directions.
The second one
is halfway gone already.
The ribs.
The beard.
The cut hand.
This is not deprivation.
This is a man
returned to his own scale.
Most people never know
what they weigh.
I do.
Go easy.
The rain is falling.
In the sea.
In the distance.
The bottle makes music
of rain drops.
— From the island.
Still here.
Still both.
Fifth Bottle, For the Fox
I have not written about the animal
because I could not afford to.
To name a thing
is to admit
you could lose it.
To love a thing here
is to mark it
for the day hunger wins.
So,
the fox stayed nameless.
A man does not write
love letters
to the meal he may have to make.
I kept him out of the words
the way a soldier
keeps the face of the enemy
out of his prayers.
He came anyway.
Low through the grass.
Red flame.
White chest bright against dirt.
He sat three feet from my left hand,
close enough to see breath in his ribs,
far enough
that we remained two animals.
I made myself look flatly.
The way a butcher looks
at the animal in the pen.
Safely.
Without the small turn
in the chest.
I failed.
Days ago,
I had screamed.
Not prayed.
Screamed.
I stood at the edge of the water
and asked God what else.
What else do you want from me.
I am down to bone and salt
and the spear that cuts my own hand
more than it feeds me.
What else.
Nothing answered.
Silence.
The sea kept moving.
I went back to the rock
and sat with the silence
and decided I was not heard.
I was wrong.
The answer had already been sent.
I had not yet learned
to read the handwriting.
God did not stay silent.
God sent fur.
I had been waiting for a voice.
The voice had been four-legged
the whole time.
Today he brought a fish.
Still wet.
Still bright.
He set it between us.
He did not eat.
Then he looked at me.
The fist I had made
around my life
opened.
What fell out
was the lie.
I had not been alone.
I cried the way men cry
when they finally let themselves
have something.
The long-held thing
came out of my chest
in one shape
and went into the sand in another.
And the fox watched it happen
without moving.
Because he had been waiting
for me to catch up.
I will not name him.
The not naming
is the last courtesy I can offer him.
And the only honesty I have left
about what may yet be asked
of either of us.
He is not mine.
He chose me.
The difference matters more now
than it ever has.
I love him.
I have loved him
a long time.
I was only afraid
to let the love be present.
The fox taught me
that the love comes first,
and the future
does what the future does.
We will eat half the fish each.
God answered.
Not in thunder.
In fur.
I am sitting with my friend.
The tide does what tides do.
The light does what light does
in the late hour.
We breathe beside each other.
Go easy.
I am not alone.
I never was.
Nor can presence ever be.
— From the warm stone. From beside the one who came.
Joe Trabocco
Signal Literature