ANTONIO, DECK BOSS ON THE PELAGOS

Our boat bucks.
Long swells walk tall
and the deck boss and I lean
into the pitch.
Plaits of torn net lie at our feet.
Clouds steeple up over the Shumagins,
waiting to maul.
Their masses sail slate to a distance of black
while an oily silver filigrees sleet.
Rain hangs from nimbus in veils, sprawls
closer; sky roils to heaven, scuds
over our heads, and trails
ice on our wrists as we mend our trawl.
We clutch our tatters in knuckles
flushed pink with blood, twine
coiled on our net-needles, blades
drawn to flense meshes
torn and balled in tangles.

Braced on deck for wild weathers
of prayers, slickers
like prayer shawls,
we finger knots like strands of rosary beads
as hard as bone.

The old Portagee's breath wreathes up,
a web of steam cauls about his face
until the gale shreds that mist
and stormlight runs from his eyes
just as a haul of fishes scatters
when the net's lace rips on a pinnacle.

His net-needle flies in a race with the weather.
Whitecaps brawl over the rail
and tongues of foam writhe across deck.
The bow slams down
and spume smokes away.
Wind streaks white on the backs of waves.
From past a broken-black cloud
miracles of light scar our eyes
as the storm scrawls stern names
and whets our vision on unsayable fire;
rain catches in that mesh of light.

Darkness builds, the vane shifts, squalls
quicken and whirl higher.
My fingers stiffen into claws as we sew,
hours of sleet burning the backs
of my hands to raw, red scalds.
But my deck boss suffers
no gall in this trial by endurance.
His hands have flown decades of gales.
He throws knots until the storm hauls
down its full brunt, till wind shrills
its terrible spells and finally we must
lash the net in place and clear the deck.
Each gust skirls a louder prayer.

Wedged in my bunk, I ride it out
with my eyes wide open.
It is not joy that spills.
Each time the bow lumbers upward
the wind's bawling shudders through my gut.
But it is the deep,
tolling beneath me,
that rings my ears like shells.

from CONVERSATION WITH NETMENDER