Watermarks

by Margaret Haberman

It takes time to navigate my love 
affair with Captain Skip Green 
and his relentless love of all 
things nautical, and my relentless 
love of his rough hands 
on wooden tiller, blue eyes scanning. 

He sees horizon edges, granite, 
shades of darkness beneath 
the strained and weighty sail, 
guillemots and their clown-red feet, 
the flying pillow of a puffin 
out near Matinicus Rock. 
He does not look to starboard, 
to the tilted surface where I stand. 

My hands smooth, still young, 
the helm handed to me 
in calm seas and a following breeze, 
in August but never September. 
Heart seized up like danforth 
anchor mired in mud, rode frayed, 
tangled around a lobster buoy. 

Cross hitch, half hitch, clove hitch— 
Which one holds and which one binds? 
Which one slips and which one tightens? 
I longed for the doldrums, and he the gale. 

His courtship began in a green and white 
Peapod, a pint of cherry vanilla ice cream 
tucked beneath the gunwales. We rowed 
out near the ledges in the dusk 
of a falling tide and so, I called it fate. 

It takes time to push off, away, back 
to land. And in winter, as snow 
started to fall, water on water, 
boots skidding across a frozen lake, 
my love affair disappears behind me, 
like scuff marks on the ice.