by ohcaptainmycaptain » March 12, 2021, 9:43 pm
Admins,
Feel free to delete as you wish. I started this a while back when I heard about the plan to scrap her, I started this, and it sat for a while, and now finally got around to finishing it. It may be a touch too saccharine, but y'all can be the judge of that.
The American Fortitude Sent to Scrap
for D.L.L
There’s nothing worse than a friend gone for no reason,
but even when it’s expected—
the brutal arithmetic of cancer,
or Alzheimer’s and the long forgetting,
—absence is its own surprise.
As these things go, she was a small boat,
690 feet, but four laps around her was still a statute mile.
Her steam engine burned heavy fuel oil,
not diesel, but she could still carry
twenty thousand tons of stone or coal,
or with a little imagination,
and more than a bit of augmentation,
do something else,
maybe patrolling the Pacific Garbage Patch,
like some great artificial whale.
But instead, a ship in working order
was idled, then towed away and sold for scrap.
This isn’t about a ship, of course, but the crew,
every ship struck
is a row’s worth of foreclosed houses
in Cleveland or Detroit or Duluth.
This is how it’s always worked:
the ships are laid up,
the crews that are laid off struggle,
and the bosses get their money.
But a short-term outlook gets you a short-lived future.
People have taken to the water here for forever,
in birchbark canoes, Mackinaw boats
whalebacks or thousand footers.
A sailor is a sailor is a sailor.
We’ve always plied the lakes.
That is what they’re for,
so there will always be people
ready to brace against the waves, the cold,
to risk their lives
to experience and survive
the power of water, surf, rocks, and wind.
Admins,
Feel free to delete as you wish. I started this a while back when I heard about the plan to scrap her, I started this, and it sat for a while, and now finally got around to finishing it. It may be a touch too saccharine, but y'all can be the judge of that.
The American Fortitude Sent to Scrap
for D.L.L
There’s nothing worse than a friend gone for no reason,
but even when it’s expected—
the brutal arithmetic of cancer,
or Alzheimer’s and the long forgetting,
—absence is its own surprise.
As these things go, she was a small boat,
690 feet, but four laps around her was still a statute mile.
Her steam engine burned heavy fuel oil,
not diesel, but she could still carry
twenty thousand tons of stone or coal,
or with a little imagination,
and more than a bit of augmentation,
do something else,
maybe patrolling the Pacific Garbage Patch,
like some great artificial whale.
But instead, a ship in working order
was idled, then towed away and sold for scrap.
This isn’t about a ship, of course, but the crew,
every ship struck
is a row’s worth of foreclosed houses
in Cleveland or Detroit or Duluth.
This is how it’s always worked:
the ships are laid up,
the crews that are laid off struggle,
and the bosses get their money.
But a short-term outlook gets you a short-lived future.
People have taken to the water here for forever,
in birchbark canoes, Mackinaw boats
whalebacks or thousand footers.
A sailor is a sailor is a sailor.
We’ve always plied the lakes.
That is what they’re for,
so there will always be people
ready to brace against the waves, the cold,
to risk their lives
to experience and survive
the power of water, surf, rocks, and wind.