He isn’t a religious man.
So instead of going to church
on Sunday they go to sea.
They cruise up and down,
see the ferry coming from Bridgeport
to Green Harbor, and going back
from Green Harbor to Bridgeport . . .
and all the boats there are.
The occasional silent fisherman . .
When the kids start to get restless
and his wife has a headache
he heads back to shore.
I hear them returning
worn out and glad to be home.
This is as close to being happy
as a family ever gets.
I envy their content. And yet
I’ve done that too, and know
that no hobby or activity
distracts one from thinking
forever. Every human being
is an intellectual more or less.
I too was a family man.
It was a phase I had to go through.
I remember tenting in the Sierras,
getting up at dawn to fly cast.
I remember my young son
almost being blown off the jetty
in Oban. Only the suitcase
he was carrying held him down.
The same, at Viareggio,
followed me into the sea
and was almost swept away by the current.
These are the scenes I recall
rather than Christmas and Thanksgiving.
My life as the father of a family
seems to have been a series
of escapes, not to mention illnesses,
confrontations with teachers,
administrators, police.
Flaubert said, “They’re in the right,”
looking at a bourgeois family,
and then went back happily
to his dressing gown and pipe.
Yes, I believe in the family . .
next door. I rejoice
at their incomings and outgoings.
I am present when Betty
goes out on her first date.
I hear about Joey’s being chosen
for the team. I survive the takeover
of the business, and the bad scare
at the doctor’s.
I laugh with them that laugh
and mourn with them that mourn.
I see their lights, and hear a murmur
of voices, from house to house.
It gives me a strange feeling
to think how far they’ve come
from some far world to this,
bending their necks to the yoke
of affection.
And that one day,
with a few simple words
and flowers to keep them company,
they’ll return once more to the silence
out there, beyond the stars.
Leave a Reply