The Upset Sea

Alaska Poems by Mike Finley, 2010

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Table of Contents ...........................................................................4The Boards..........................................................5My Daughter Tells Me ......................................6The Diving Board...............................................7The Woman in Seat 20C....................................9The Upset Sea .................................................10Everything Dies But Nothing Goes Away .....12Impatience........................................................15I Stopped to Watch a Softball Game ..............16The Upset Sea .................................................17Calving ............................................................19Turnagain Arm and the Erratic Stones.........22At Swanson Lake ............................................24Places You Can Only Visit by Plane and Sometimes Boat .......................................26For Sale ............................................................27Bloop ...............................................................28Formation.........................................................29Communique ...................................................30You Dream of Genie ........................................31Dead End .........................................................32I Don't Like Too Much Certainty ...................33Three Creatures ..............................................34Things You Cannot Write About Because It Breaks Some Kind of Law ...........35Carnation .........................................................36Crossing Nobles County on a Clear Day .......37The Rain Will Come ........................................38Why Seek You Him Here? ..............................41Priorities ..........................................................42

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Ways Cars Kill ................................................43Bridge Nymph .................................................44The Soul Likes Things the Way They Are .. . .45The Soul's Analogy ..........................................46Dream of a Shooting Gallery ..........................47On the Plane ....................................................48The Soul Does Not Countenance Tragedy .....49The Cascades Greet You..................................50Two Single Mothers At the Anchorage Airport 51Jon's Song ........................................................52

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The Boards

Be joyful as you climb the stepsput spring in your toes and the treetops

You are measured out for these sleevesand boxed in by these exigencies

God gave you bells so give them a shakelet them tinkle to the striking clock

Say oh what a beautiful dayas if you were Gordon Goddamn McCrea

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My Daughter Tells Me

Each time I see you sadI feel worse inside

I wish you could see I just had a bad day

I'm sorry it hurt youBut I was hurting too.

That is whatDaniele would say

Kick out the chocksAnd let me roll away

The Diving Board

My son has already jumped into the YMCA pool,6 years old, tumbling like a spiderand then skittering away to the lip.But I stand atop the wobbling 15 foot board, paralyzed. I did not know this about myself, that I was afraid of things,and I could not tell you what it was I feared.Obviously people jump off boards and do not die in large numbers,but I could not step forward, I was like a statueon the fiberglass, and eventually had to beg my way backwardsdown the ladder, passing chloriny children with baffled expressions. A minute later I climbed back up again,and in my shame I pretended to be brave,and plunged headlong, it was as ifmy fear had weighed me down, because Isank to the bottom and only imperceptibly began to rise again,like a dislodged log.

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Between my excitement and my fright,I had little air in me, and my lungs were close to burstingwhen I finally found light, and drew air in again.I don't think anyone but me knewhow awful I felt up in the twilight, with the sounds of kidssplashing and screaming with joy. But in that moment I saw forward perhapsto the terrible tenuousness of life,not just my own but the lives of those I loved,and how helpless I was to save them. And to just dive into this mystery, as if it were a joke,as if no one ever got hurt, as if everyone woke up every morningwith light in their eyes and the sunon their faces, was a lie.And I knew it, in my bones, in my trembling hands,but back then, that day on the diving board,I didn't understand.

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The Woman in Seat 20C

Sometimes in theperiphery of the eyeyou see one

Someone who knowsthe way thatthings are

You know them bythe rings aroundtheir eyes

Paranoid, hostile,broken-hearted,

They are the expertson the waythings are

I would like to cupher cheek inmy palm

and say I know, I know, isn't it awful

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The Upset Sea

Weather reports said it would get heavy but it still came on fast. By noon the sea was rolling, 10 foot swells that pitched the boat repeatedly into the next wall of water, forcing people to huddle in the cabin and glance about with worried expressions. The newlywed couple in front of us were sick she lovely in the face and eyes, he a little drunk and full from two too many complimentary cinnamon rolls.

So when he barfed all over her, the pitch of the boat was such that it dripped down off her and onto the heaving floor, including my backpack beside her, until it was swimming in chowderand the people stared at it slipping to and fro with unclosable eyes.

Meanwhile the boat was rocking and rolling and I was torn mentally between thoughts of the craft's capsizing and thoughts that that might rinse the backpack clean. A small young woman from the excursion company stepped forward, miraculously able to right herself, and began to press the woman with paper napkins,' the brown nonabsorbent kind you find in lavatories. The junior ship's officer knelt like Magdalene in the typhoon to daub the shaken woman's sweater and jeans, then led the two back to the bow

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where the pitching was minimal. She staggered back to see if I wanted to empty the pack and she would hose it down. Ashamed by her graciousness, I nodded. She offered me gloves but I said no, I was once a dad and waded through worse than this. The boat continued to pitch and yaw and the newlywed woman returned, boyfriendless, to stare sullenly out the window. But when we ducked back into the inlet, away from he raging sea, she rose and rejoined him at the gangplank, where they kissed and smiled, but they stayed stationed for a getaway, wanting to face people no more. "I want to thank you for your positive attitude," said the brave young boatswain, who I wanted as a daughter. "And you for your great courtesy," I replied, sorry I would never see her again. And as Rachel and I walked safely ashore, I lifted the backpack to smell. It was all there, my computer, my wallet, my cellphone, my journal, my books, and mixed in with it all, the sea itself, plus the smell of some guy's stomach juices, along with the faintest hint of cinnabon.

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Everything Dies But Nothing Goes Away

In Kotzebue there is no recycling program. No one wants what this small city far away to the north throws away. It's too expensive to go after their shit for the small savings of reprocessing it. A crusher would cost a million plus and everything would still have to be sorted and separated. You think of the melting glaciers and you think of the energy hat went into everything that is visible everywhere. And it's not just the pop cans, it's everything. No one pays the gas to have it sent to a landfill, put on a barge to be chopped up and reused.And so the front yards fill up, with everything people have used -- the cars that no longer run, the freezers that stopped freezing, the broken toilets, the ravaged boats, old air conditioners, rusted grills , the splintered plywood ramps used by skateboarders to get lift from the pull of the tundra. bicycles, snow-gos, barrows, storage containers, chainsawed doghouses, shipping containers as big as a house, cement mixers that ground to a halt. I saw industrial equipment I can never identify, great hulking iron things with fans and flanges and levers that once did something powerful but now can only sit

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In front of a log cabin I saw a broken treadmill labeled "Endurance." I saw four school lockers, leaning side by side against a wall, their yellow paint flaking in the subzero cold. And up on the tar-paper roofs of these caved-in houses, the racks of moose and caribou, skulls still connected, vegetarian teeth bared to the cold, the trophies of long-ago hunts. And sits on their lawns forever, I don't mean lawns, because there is no grass, it sits on their property, it gives away their secrets, it's a 3D photo album, shot to scale, it's the story of their lives standing around doing nothing. A part of me says how wasteful. A part of me says what a mess. But it teaches us a lesson. it teaches you that everything we make takes up space. We who ship everything off to the dump have convinced ourselves we are tidy people when somewhere a half dozen zip codes away a landfill is groaning from our excesses. And we look at these people of the north and wring our noses like they are the slobs and we are the civilized ones while our shit is packed off to trouble some people in China, in Mexico, or under some mountain in Nevada, Or it leeches into our own water substrate and we wonder why our SAT scores are dropping. It's a filthy-ass world however you shave it

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so why not keep the bones above ground, to see? And that's what they do, in Kotzebue – the permafrost prevents deep graves, as if the earth is saying. oh no you don't, you can't hide that slop in me, so you lay them atop of it instead, you heap stones and gravel over the suck-mouth ancestors and the beautiful girls in beaded fur parkas, you strew plastic flowers on the sea-washed stones flowers that fade from the cold and the blinding sun, and say this was our life, we cannot tell a lie, and even if we could, the earth would not allow it.

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Impatience

Fogged in at Kotzebue, in the high Arctic Circle we were supposed to fly to Anchorage yesterday morning and rent an RV for a week. But the planes aren't flying and we have missed four consecutive flights It is the Fourth of July, and pilots are home now waving tiny flags in hometown parades while Rachel and I pace the length of the Nulligvit Hotel. There's nothing to do here, no restaurants, no saloons, just shacks and an airport. I consider it a point of growth that I want to get going, that I am looking forward to explorations and seeing things. and if she tells me “It is what it is” one more time I don't know what I'll do.

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I Stopped to Watch a Softball Game

You could tell they were a rough crowd, maybe prisoners or recovering addicts, from the cigarettes they smoked,even out in the field, or the knife-chains dangling from some of their belts, or from the way they stood, flat on their feet, gloves hanging at their sides. At first I was shy about standing at the backstop watching each batter step up. They didn't know how to stand, or how to step in, but they swung with all their might,they spun on their heels, and the ball rode up and over the chainlink,sometimes. Maybe they killed someone, or caused them to bleed.Maybe they stole and got caught,I don't know, but this was still baseball.

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The Upset Sea

Weather reports said it would get heavy but it still came on fast. By noon the sea was rolling, 10 foot sells that pitched the boat repeatedly into the next wall of water, forcing people to huddle in the cabin and glance about with worried expressions. The newlywed couple in front of us were sick she lovely in he face and eyes, ha a little drunk and full from two too many cinnamon breakfast rolls. So when he barfed all over her, the pitch of the boat was such that it dripped down off her and onto the floor, including my backpack beside her, until it was swimming in chowder, Meanwhile the boat was rocking and rolling and I was torn mentally between thoughts of the craft's capsizing and thoughts that that might rinse the backpack clean. A small young woman from the excursion company stepped forward, miraculously able to right herself, and began to press the woman with paper napkins,' the brown nonabsorbent kind you find in lavatories. Still she knelt like Magdalene in the typhoon tp daub the shaken woman's sweater and jeans, then led the two back to the bow where the pitching was minimal. She staggered back to see if I wanted to empty the pack and she would hose it down. Ashamed by her graciousness, I nodded. She offered me gloves but I said no,

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I was once a dad and waded through worse than this. The boat continued to pitch and yaw and the newlywed woman returned, boyfriendless, to stare sullenly out the window. But when we ducked back into the inlet, away from he raging sea, she rose and rejoined him at the gangplank, where they kissed and smiled, but they stayed stationed for a getaway, wanting to face people no more. "I want to thank you for your positive attitude," said the brave young boatswain, who I wanted as a daughter. "And you for your great courtesy," I replied, sorry I would never see her again. And as Rachel and I walked safely ashore, I lifted the backpack to smell. It was all there, my computer, my wallet, my cellphone, my journal, my books, and mixed in with it all, the sea itself, plus the smell of some guy's stomach juices, plus the faintest hint of cinnamon.

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Calving The toe of the Northwestern Glacier is blue as a bubble gum sno-cone. It is the way light refracts under the pressure of a million tons of freezing and grinding. Still it looks stunningly wrong, as if someone has spray-painted a mountain. The passengers on the excursion boat crowd around the railing, snapping and popping. "It was much more spectacular last year," complains a woman holding her hat on. The boat has quieted, we are to sit here until something "calves" and slips into the sea. An Indian woman with a bright red bindi steps back into the cabin giggling: "It's too cold!" The boat bobs gently, we all stare intently. Several minor fallings occur, and the ice and snow crumbles into the cold fjord waters, "That chip hasn't budged all summer," said the first mate, of a 10-story chunk that is skronking away from the main. A knucklehead, standing by the bar turns from the view just long enough to say,

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"Maybe if we used some dynamite," hyuk-hyuk, and that is when the ice-pin chose to fall and down it slides with a cracking sound as if the entire ocean has broken, 150 feet high, surrendering, like a fat lady in a burning building letting go and tumbling into the big blue net, and the wave it makes rises higher than the boat and soon we are the chip rocking in its wake. Everyone feels an enormous release and is enormously pleased. We have seen a mountain fall into the sea and we need to get on with our day. "Dang," says Goofy, "I shouldna looked away. It doesn't bother anyone that each calf pushed out of the glacier's haunch happens further up the hill. So the captain starts puttering away, the only witness to our great god fortune a harbor seal popped up behind us, like a minstrel smacking his whiskered lips. and in an English actor's voice intones "They took to the sea, but the sea loved them not

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and spat them back upon the shore."

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Turnagain Arm and the Erratic Stones

The estuary at the end of Cook Inlet gets its name from the same Captain Bligh we read about in Mutiny on the Bounty, the one who rowed across the Pacific, and who evidently thought this way was very bendy, turn again.

But what makes this bay amazing is something called the bore tide which only takes place in a couple of places in the world, where the high tide is much, much higher than the low – 30 feet in places, where 3 feet would be normal – so that when the tide comes in and as the ocean chokes the funnel of the bay, the volume is so great the water starts to roar and churns like it is possessed,like it is running in place,like a ship still tethered to its moorings, only this river now goes upstream instead of down, and the mud at the bottom is stirred like a blender, till the color is the color of chocolate milk and the winds, coming from the opposite direction, blowing down through the Chugach Range, are impossible to walk into. I see a man watch his daughter fly out of his arms and back into the front seat of his car, I see a man with a pint of blueberry yogurt and a plastic spoonon his face, I see brave strong men walk into the wind like mimes, pantlegs flapping furiously, posture diagonal.

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And then ... from the other side of Cook Inlet, where the water is broader,when the tide goes out ... and the winds die down, the inlet bottom reveals its treasure below, huge cube-shaped rocks, as big as Econoline vans, these rocks are called erratics, because they do not quite belong there, they were thrown a mile long ago from the mountains that formed them, Mount Redoubt, and Mount Torbert, and Mount Spur,and belched across the bay, and then the giant stones eroded from the adjoining cliffs, the way a hose washes mud from your overshoes,these stones lie at rest on the furious ocean floor,every morning, and again every evening, like giant foam dice, they know their secret combinations and they know they will be showing their submerged faces again soon,dripping wet and and winkingtheir peekaboo mystery to the world.

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At Swanson Lake

Little Cora floated in an inner tube, her polka-dotted, swimsuited butt poking through the rubber bottom, and she footy-paddled into the reeds, and when she emerged from the reeds it had happened,she was covered with a hundred black leeches. Her sisters seeing her covered with worms screamed but they would not offer to help, it was up to her mother and her brotherwho knelt and began to pick them off,like dabs of black toothpaste,like moving globs of oil, but the young leeches were so small that when you picked them from under the girl's big toenail they burrowed under your own fingernail,squiggling into the pores of your skin. Finally the hands of the mother and brother converged at the bathing suit and the brother stood and ran away cryingbecause up one leg sat the mother of the brood, she was bigger around than a tricycle tire so the mom mounted several forays to fetch out the queen, she wished there were a tool that could pluck monster leeches from little girls' hineys but there was only her fingers that could not get a grip on the slithery, scratchy, undulating thing,the palpitating muscle, the vampire slug and when she finally grasped the thing around the middle and yanked it out, making a schlocking sound,

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and the little girl's blood bled out from the tearsin the licorice skin,and Cora cried with all her little might and stood on the sand upright, naked, legs apart,mouth upturned in a horrified frown, her fingers splayed, her blanched little body all suckered, and throbbings , too much had been taken,too many kisses too many matinee intrusionsfor one June afternoon.

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Places You Can Only Visit by Plane and Sometimes Boat Kivalina ... whaleskin princess of the coast Noorvik … the village that everyone moved toNoatak ..on the river, and the gravelly airstripDeering … around the tip of Cape Deception Buckland … facing out to the seaSelawik … its lacework of pools and streams Kiana … the jewel of the rushing Kobuk Kobuk … the one that is far away

and the furthest of all, a village called Sun …at the foot of the mountains,where nobody goes

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For Sale

(a card pinned to the Ningalvik Hotel corkboard)

Woman's diamond ring $400, firm Fits up to size 10 Never worn Must see to appreciate

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Bloop

Lips pursed, the fish in the bowl stares goggle-eyed out of its tank. It forms one perfect bubble, inside which is nested a single syllable, which asks one simple question -- Why? Why? What did I do?

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Formation

The terns swoop togetherone foot over,they move in unisonlike a single creature

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Communique

I am talking to you as if beauty were still beautiful and would continue to be so forever I am talking to you as if the world did not end and things kept on being the way that they are I am talking to you with your face in my hands our love was the sweetest thing I have known Oh baby I am talking to you

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You Dream of Genie

You wanted a woman who would play with you One who only wanted to laugh, who was always a joy to talk to,who awaited your next transmission, sure it would set her to giggling but she would never beg you to stop, of course it would be your way and it would so fulfilling to her to be fulfilling to you like a spirit in a bottle You would be doing her a favor to let her love you Instead you got a person who squints when you say things and does not shrink from correcting you Far from a master, you a vulnerable adult and far from sitting at your knees, eyes shining with girlish delight She is investigating long-term care and gazing into your eyesand with a smile on her lipsoh so gently she is shaking her head.

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Dead End

Yes you knew her don't say you didn't The crazy feeling when you told a joke and she got it she just got it and her eyes rolled with pleasure and the world made glorious sense for a moment out of nature you fashioned your own replacement and you wanted to bow down in the grass thank the god for this blessing but the miracle was revoked it's true it is bitter to have loved and lost, than not to love at all ashes, ashes everywhere

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I Don't Like Too Much Certainty

I like to be surprised

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Three Creatures

The cormorant doesn't have waterproof wings and must flap them on a sunny perch till they dry, The sea otter is the only sea mammal without blubber. So he's equipped with a denser fur than mink. The puffin has solid bones, not hollow like most birds.and she has to really beat her wings to fly. But her heavier weight lets her fly underwater,more like a fish than a seagull, And she swallows so many mackerel down there, huffing and puffing and going to town

it is as hard for her to achieve liftoff afteras a freight plane loaded down with bricks

So when that enlarged body and face like a clowndefy gravity, taking to the air to feed her babies

the dozen fish still swarming inside her, she knowsnature, grievous and cartoonish as it often is,

is not without compensations

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Things You Cannot Write About Because It Breaks Some Kind of Law

Old love ... because you don't know what will awaken

Blows below the belt ... because it is not a noble way to lose

Children's embarrassments ... because they will hate you for your greedy mouth

Despair ... because no one anywhere wants to know

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Carnation

she's my eyes she's the air in the sky everywhere she's the moon looking down on a bad part of town she's the nazz she's the beans she stole her only scene she's a flower red as blood she's a course that has been run she's the slap out on the water she is every man's daughter

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Crossing Nobles County on a Clear Day

It was not a tornado because it was not attached to anything. It was a devil of dust, a creature of air pressure, a swirl of turbulence on a warm afternoon Not thick and dark, but tawny and tan, the color of dirt being milled into sunlight, like a thousand-foot feather tickling the tummy of the laughing,helpless earth

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The Rain Will Come

When the stain sets and sinks into the cloth on a rag on a post on a gravelly hill where the ants march steady in the crimson clay The rain will come and wash it away When there is too much to bear and you have worn out prayer And there is some thing that needs to be gone the rain will come and wear it down Though no one you know will understand something hard to comprehend though faith is dead and odd is even the rain will come and rinse it clean When the gouge is deep and the hole erodes and scoured hollow by a stone and the universe is as empty as a sin the rain will come again and fill it in When you have given up for good And you tried everything you could And you made arrangements with the pain And the worm has burrowed lengthwise through the brain The rain will come and start to fall again

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Why Seek You Him Here?

Why look for him in prayer God is not there you can't place a local call to the All-In-All Not responding to anyone, why, that's half the fun He has gone into his father's house He's got no time for the likes of us Too busy creating fresh wounds to manage old accounts Best to look for him in jail picking his teeth with a nail Better, look where no one looks and not in books

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Priorities

God is not listening to your prayer God is not even there He is too busy creating fresh wounds to attend to old accounts

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Ways Cars Kill

They crash into pylons and fracture our bones The houseful of gas finds the sleepers upstairs They torch the currency And weaken security The carbon gets into the air and soon it is everywhere They venture where they are allowed Sometimes piling into crowds Sometimes they burst into flame,And all that is left is your name

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Bridge Nymph

Oh daughter dearwhy wait you here?

I come to the riverAnd watch forever

Oh daughter deardo you not fear?

The wood is oldAnd I am cold

Oh daughter dearI want you near

Look then to the sky,Because I did not die

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The Soul Likes Things the Way They Are

The soul likes being the way that it is hairy, smelly, tracking in crud Don't think you can change that thing Stasis is encoded n its blood An organization is to its employee like a person is to a dog

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The Soul's Analogy

The soul is to its body as a worker to the farm The soul wants to please and it wants to be retained, not get let go into the cold to lick the frozen bowl it wants a good relationship and will work to maintain it it is willing to learn and to adapt but it has its limits, too just to be there, and to breathe your farty air is heaven to hm problem is the soul is made of muscle and fur, it is real while the body seeks limited liability for the day it sends the soul away, the body cannot stem corruption because it is just a corporation

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Dream of a Shooting Gallery

I want a woman to take me down on a filthy mattress in a bad part of town Her eyes are brown and sun and bleared she appears and then disappears She doesn't smile and yet you know she takes pleasure in rottenness And there's no need to wash her hair And I don't need to talk to her We communicate solely by moans, she tells me stories through her bones She wants no house, she wants no ring But we want the same thing

We tie each other off and hit the mark and journey nose to neck into the dark

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On the Plane

I sit next to a Chinese student She has no nose to speak of She is moon-faced and it is a late night flight and I want to turn to her and say, you can lay your head on my armif you like, it will keep you from getting a stiff neck, but I didn't, of course. I miss Daniele so much.

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The Soul Does Not Countenance Tragedy

The soul does not countenance tragedy It knows how little there is at stake if its tail caughr fire and burned it down Life is life, and if a switch gets flipped then you go on with something else. The world doesn't value individuals You inhale, you exhale, the smile need never leave your lips. Even if you vanish in your sleep, whatever's next must be a kind of gift.

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The Cascades Greet You

Approaching Seattle you see the boys below First the stubby ones barely poking through Frowning in the late afternoon bright They hold their hands up as visors You feel you are cheating somehow sailing by on an aluminum bus And you caught the boys unawares, until the cloud cover forms above. You think you've seen the last of them, except here are the really big boys, poking through the canopy, reclining like emperors on their sofas

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Two Single Mothers At the Anchorage Airport

One brings her three daughters holding hands in a line, to the counter. All four are beautiful, but the oldest, perhaps 13, is different. She walks flatfooted, open-mouthed, pulling at her mom. But when she reaches the check-in, she cocks her head and moans. The mother shows no embarrassment, she does not hiss harsh words. She holds her daughter back, with dignity and love. The other mother might weigh 80 pounds, and her son, 12, glances at the other passengers with a suspicious scowl. He too is small, a twig from her branch, and you see he will never be big so he is learning to be tough instead. There is no mercy in his eyes. But now it's time for breakfast, \and the twig-woman takes him by the hand and leads him off to McDonalds, and the tough customer looks up at his mother and beams.

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Jon's Song

At his sister's funeral Jon surprised us by stepping up to play. He has composed a new song and it was different from the intricate tapping and drumming routines. In the middle is a place where the melody breaks down and he strums broadly, and flatly, without his customary sweetness, it is like wailing with his hands, and it is so rending you wonder when it will stop. The people in the chapel, almost 500 of them, look up at his moment with open mouths. You may be very skilled with your hands or you may be a top programmer but try and do what I did, create a man from the protein of your being, create a man who can carve a song out of his own deepest grief, and against every customary need to protect himself stands on his own two feel before a roomful of strangers on the most impossible day of days and he plays, and plays like that. You can kill us right now, his song insisted, but there will be more because we will make more, we will fight death to the death, with ungloved hands, and with music.

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