Maneuvering

by Colin Sargent

History remembers
The 1946 diplomatic mission President Truman
Took to South America aboard the USS Missouri,
Steaming out of Washington at midnight

Into the stars 

But might easily forget
The young man out here, 

Slack, bony, and lank,
With red hair, maybe,
From Texas, maybe,
A young Navy lieutenant from the Piney Woods, then!
Maneuvering his destroyer
down the bulrushes of the Potomac
Softly as you’d tiptoe into your
Daughter’s bedroom
To kiss her good night.

          God, it’s dark out here 

Dark as a ouija board
Thrown down a mine shaft 

And because the Missouri is as big
As Landover Mall and displaces
Most of the river, because 

The president must be protected
Against all enemies, foreign and domestic, 

Her destroyers must screen her
Far on the Maryland side,
Far on the Virginia side,
A bit dangerous, this screening, 

Rushing into the blackness
With the bottom coming up quickly: 

Like braille the unseen shores
sweep by, close enough
to hear a Northern Spy 

Apple drop.

It was this dark 

The night he came back
late from hunting, and having shot nothing,
shot mistletoe from the tops of trees
for his little girls, 

This dark the first time his captain,
old riverboat captain
who never would trust sonar,
whispered to him
near the shores of Leyte, 

Take off your shoes,
feel for the bottom   
with your stocking feet. 

And so at his command the entire watch section
aboard the USS Dyess
begins to take off their shoes,
calloused men
fresh from the Pacific Island War
strong enough to kick
your ass off the pier,
well these inexcoriable tough
sare now shoeless and geisha sensitive 

The mud quivering below
erogenous as custard,
dreaming of being touched. 

How dark it is 

Out here in the cattails
out here in the real world
where Washington’s dollar probably splashed

And now these men are 

Princess sensitive, vertiginous
waiting
waiting
geisha sensitive, opera appreciating 

The quartermaster sighing
and lighting a cigarette. 

“Many dark doorways
should only be entered
one man at a time,” they say, 

But here in the night
with all the stars in the jar 

There is the kind of beauty
that simply embarrasses men 

Night pouring in
and the bridge lit by heaven 

Then a single tree in white
out in front of the rest
steps out on stage, 

The universe inside out
laughing, like the abyss… 

Years later I ask him

Did you go aground? 

And he smiles,
lights a pipe
beside the swimming pool
that a few months later
will be filling with leaves. 

He’s gone now
and I think of him,
one foot
in the darkness,
one foot 

here
more ready than anyone
to sense this side
and the other side 

And brave enough to go there before me. 

I can’t feel him beneath my feet.

I feel him … everywhere. 

****

Colin W. Sargent teaches writing at The College of William and Mary. A former Ch-46D pilot and editor of the Navy's Approach magazine, he started Portland Monthly magazine in his home town in 1986, where he continues as editor & publisher. A Maine Individual Artist Fellow in poetry, he has a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster University. Museum of Human Beings was his first novel. His second, The Boston Castrato, was published in 2016 by Barbican Press of London. He lives with his wife, Nancy, a former Naval Officer, in Virginia and Maine. www.colinwsargent.com.