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Why does the wind get the names of women
in Montauk, the windiest port of the East
Coast?
Why Cambria, Thallassa Snatch, Penelope
Grape,
Tiffany Blue, Cynthia Cuddletwat, and
these are not
real names, since most fishermen work
between
chance and superstition and have no names
for most of the things they see or fish
they catch.
Because they think they see the wind?
Therefore Dot,
Valley Few?
And why's our dragger named after
two Matapoisset squaws? Hey you guys dancing
the rips this morning, whistling up a
wind
and singing over the radio, why's the sea
so sexy?
You know the Montauk winter: anybody not
dead
drunk is out fishing, working cold and
sleeping cold
or down a church basement for a mean AA
meeting
where nobody's sober but the wife-beaters
and the wife-beaten and the grief-eaten
and those
who left the city in rage to live by the
sea in rags,
who never made it to Key West, Sausalito
or Anchorage
or came back, like me, to work for those
with money,
dealers in fish or drugs, who own the
boats and the women,
Who was Nashi?
Was she fair? Who
was Zonda?
Did she come in the night with Criador
& Barat?
Who knew Purga, Suestado, Solano, Brusha,
that their names carried over centuries
and oceans?
When it's breezing up my captain Stuart
says
a little air is moving Mary, Mary his
bride.
There's something wrong with the wind.
It blows too much. It blows too strong.
Most fishermen fall overboard pissing
downwind
while failing to duck what's coming
behind.
Some piss their skins. A few on board
can't piss at all.
And the sea in praise of women fixes the
eye
of the squall on your back and you come
about
ever so reluctantly, hoping to stay on
your feet
and you call the sky father and the earth
mother
but the wind coming at you needs a name:
blue balls, the one you've married
in the ceremony of pissing and moaning.
When does the wind get another name?
It's a fair day for fishing
but for us it's fuck off & die at the
dock.
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Goelet the seller
neglected
mentioning the alarm
which shorted a wire
burning nine months
just short of fire.
until flashers pronged
when headlights
retracted
& the guy at the service station
went thru
tracing the blip for a week
& declared it dead.
the best car
I ever had,
which for once let me
ride the Hamptons
in style
of sorts,
like the clothes
from the Ladies Village
Improvement Society's
Bargain Box, stuff the rich
write off
and I wear
proud in my fashion
up from the underclass
and back down to it.
Allen Planz has published seven
books pf poetry, of which Dune Heath (Canios editions 98) is the
latest.
Recipient of two NEA's, two
NYSAF's, Planz is a licensed captain who will take 1-3 people
birding, light-tackle fishing or ecotouring the East End of Long
Island by boat or buggy.
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