Maneuvering

History remembersThe 1946 diplomatic mission President TrumanTook to South America aboard the USS Missouri,Steaming out of Washington at midnightInto the stars But might easily forgetThe 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 destroyerdown the bulrushes of the PotomacSoftly as you’d tiptoe into yourDaughter’s bedroomTo kiss her good night.           God, it’s dark out here Dark as a ouija boardThrown down a mine shaft And because the Missouri is as bigAs Landover Mall and displacesMost of the river, because The president must be protectedAgainst all enemies, foreign and domestic, Her destroyers must screen herFar on the Maryland side,Far on the Virginia side,A bit dangerous, this screening, Rushing into the blacknessWith the bottom coming up quickly:    Like braille the unseen shoressweep by, close enough    to hear a Northern Spy Apple drop.It was this dark The night he came backlate from hunting, and having shot nothing,shot mistletoe from the tops of treesfor his little girls, This dark the first time his captain,old riverboat captainwho never would trust sonar,whispered to himnear the shores of Leyte, Take off your shoes,   feel for the bottom   with your stocking feet. And so at his command the entire watch sectionaboard the USS Dyessbegins to take off their shoes,calloused menfresh from the Pacific Island Warstrong enough to kickyour ass off the pier,well these inexcoriable toughsare now shoeless and geisha sensitive The mud quivering belowerogenous as custard,dreaming of being touched. How dark it is Out here in the cattailsout here in the real worldwhere Washington’s dollar probably splashed And now these men are Princess sensitive, vertiginouswaitingwaitinggeisha sensitive, opera appreciating The quartermaster sighingand lighting a cigarette. “Many dark doorwaysshould only be enteredone man at a time,” they say, But here in the nightwith all the stars in the jar There is the kind of beautythat simply embarrasses men Night pouring inand the bridge lit by heaven Then a single tree in whiteout in front of the reststeps out on stage, The universe inside outlaughing, like the abyss… Years later I ask himDid you go aground? And he smiles,lights a pipebeside the swimming poolthat a few months laterwill be filling with leaves. He’s gone nowand I think of him,one footin the darkness,one foot heremore ready than anyoneto sense this sideand 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.