shy-joe

she was i think now that i look for it a Sanibel 18 singlemast keelboat fiberglass mainly with some

wood trim, it was his dad’s (real dad, not Jack, who married grandma later) which must’ve

started his whole thing with boats being before his bornagain dead-horse beach (1) baptism,

when a maritime photographer working out of rented darkroom developed greymatted

prints of moored sloops in fog, dinghies and motif number 1 is a red barn (2) in rockport

which namesake Joe paints—frame within frame, and as he gives grace over triscuits I say

my own that he might take up lens again

of the Joe i remember a little black compass set in a sphere with the hinged upanddown bezel, dad

thin back then and still with the full beard getting bit bloody by lugworms to spear on

dropline hooks for us around the twinkling mobile of weights never even going anywhere (3)

but staying by bouy catching harborskate and eating pbj in our littlekid flophats, twas

summer and every-other weekend and tuesday nights as prescribed by the divorce, which

is not enough but more than we got from not-Jack with whom there were only memories

of waiting, memories and the boat

the Joe was gone before i could put a thought stronger than the compass to her and i never met the

namesake painter, of not-Jack there is still nothing, not even the boat, for even before beach

baptism the photographer was wringing himself empty without even knowing the Spirit

that would assume the void—to another spirit he sailed a poor sloop a weekstime down the

coast thinking maybe possibly improbably of some exchange for all the waiting which

maybe thanks to him, we avoided and in a nameless gray inflatable instead caught skates

while in a hurricane, the Shy-Joe sank off the coast of florida. (4)

1 42.533566, -70.873991

2 42.659334, -70.614838

3 42.544157, -70.867338

4 26.588086, -80.035271