Jody's winning poem!

By michele on April 09, 2009 | Add a Comment

It's probably no surprise that most booksellers are also writers themselves.  We're very proud of our very own Jody Hetherington, who just was named a winner in the 2009 Maine Literary Awards, sponsored by the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.  You can see her superb poem, winner in the Individual Awards for Unpublished Work Poetry category, below.  Jody also received an Honorable Mention for her fiction, "House of Words", in the Individual Awards for Unpublished Work Fiction category. Go Jody! It's only a matter of time before we're hosting her as a featured reader and published author at RiverRun!

either oar

I

First, find a boat. It helps

to have a dream of water still

lapping in your ears and the salt

of regret in your eyes. Stay

within thought of the ocean, and listen.

The murmur of remembered drift will lead you

to a hollow shell that has shipped

a load of golden leaves in someone’s

backyard, its prow pointing toward the woodpile,

its shrinking sides gone dry

in the motionless land of dread, there

beside the axe. Or you might find it

disguised as a hutch or a hill, inverted

above a spilled cargo of cobwebs

and a raccoon’s nest, the stroke

of air over its keel merely an echo

of a hope of floating. This is the chance

you have been given.

II

Wrest it from its fossil bed and enter

negotiations. These are many, long before

you have learned to steer: the relief

or resistance of unrightful owners. Time.

Equations of distance from the constant of water.

Rock-spiked paths. Eithers and oars. Your chance

would follow you if it could, straining

against its earthy mooring there at the end

of it hawser. Do not wait

for the rescue of rain, the would-be hero’s infinite

illusion. Hint: boat trailers and sheer tugging.

Follow the long-vanished tide.

III

Withhold your trust. The siren sea speaks in tongues,

lapping up the shore, its myriad whisper

as close now as warmth to frostbite.

Your task: to fill the dry silences

between the ribs of your vessel

before the water does. Ropes of caulk

twining into cracks, new wood brash enough

to span the splintering gaps, the stubborn refuse

of wax—these are your tools.

Varnish, for all its resinous assertion,

is only an afterthought. Your beforehand plans

are as manageable as the tide. Improvise.

Wax and plane. Cryptic but true, the water will tell you

when you are ready, when what’s out yearns

to be in and what’s in never diminishes.

IV

You thought you could choose your moment,

but the moment chooses you. The patience of the tide

trumps whatever you have learned about waiting.

Yes, there are shoals of gray clouds stealing

the horizon, out where the planes of sea and sky

recede infinitely into each other, and the wind

is kicking up tarantellas of doubt around your ankles.

These hesitations are nothing, dissolving in the salt sting

that has swollen the wood of your boat

with anticipation, in the ocean of now that is all

there is. The merest push sends your craft grating

from sand into susurrus; your last leap tumbles you 

wet-footed into the hollow made to hold you.

Thread the oars through the waiting locks. Begin to row

into the vivid wind, looking back at all

your weathered choices rooted on the shore. Now

learn to steer, feathering one paddle through the briny resist,

turning into the beyond behind you. Either oar.

— © Copyright 2009 by Jody Hetherington