At my age gone awkward
having forgotten everything
I ought to have remembered
about keeping balance, I fall off the boat
trying to board the dinghy,
like in a Buster Keaton bit, the dinghy
skidding away and swamping and my legs
spreading, till in I go, and come up
kicking and sputtering, then find I can't
make it back into the boat, grab hold
of the high gunwale, and heave, but can't
get leaverage, chin myself
a dozen times till I think
I've lost my breath for good, and end up
clinging to the ruddler, exhausted, beginning to feel
the cold, the knowledge dawning
that I'm in trouble, big trouble. But I wait,
thinking something has to happen
to get me out of this, though I can't think
what it might be. But I'm wrong, nothing
happens, time
drags, and it's cold, it's cold
too early to be swimming, too far to swim,
too deep to wade in, nothing happens and I try
waiting it out, but it goes on too long,
and nothing to do but after a long time
give up - whereupon I yell, holler,
bellow for help, loud
and bitterly ashamed. And after all
there's some guy working on his boat
who hears me and comes down
to the end of the dock and spots me
and rows out and saves me, and that's
the end of it. After he's gone,
I stand here on the dock,
dripping to a cold puddle
thinking it over, and trying to name
how I'm feeling - not
relief, no remnant fear
or after-fear, but mainly
embarrassment, the tag-end
of something like boredom, a growing cold,
most of it left over from out there, and still growing,
but give it up and go out
to retrieve the dinghy, retrieve
some of the duffel, find one oar,
and a floating glove,
but I'm cold, and leave the rest
to drift in in its own time,
and all the way home, the cold
hanging on, my calves knotting
with cold, the world
ashiver, I begin
thinking to myself, I'm
in trouble, this
is going to take
a long time, what do I do
until it's over? ~John Engels
