Sable Island
We spotted land for the first time in a little over a week today. Sable Island
peaking over the horizon off the starboard quarter. I rushed to the stern to see it, and
there it was. Just tiny patches in the distance like blotches of ink on roving blue paper. I
was so excited to behold it, when you get far away anything familiar reminds you of
home and my standards have dwindled everyday since I arrived at S.E.A.. On the shore
component, it was to see my house. My house on Slater Ave. packed elbow to elbow
with all the other houses like sisters and brothers. While exploring and the rest of the
Cape, it was Providence I would think of. Thayer St. with the Brown bookstore holding
volumes of local poetry, Dunken Donuts with the best hot chocolate topped by whipped
cream tumbling down the side, the playground at the end of Wayland Ave. where I
swung for hours the first night we moved there waiting for the moving company to bring
our belongings from Baltimore. When I went home to Providence between the shore
component and the sea, I missed Baltimore, my place of birth. Dirty violent, crumbling
but beautiful Baltimore. Where my friends are, my brothers and sister, all my childhood
memories. They make the pavement cracks, the abandoned buildings, the boarded
windows, the wasting cement into a home, with their arms and legs they hold together.
When I returned to Woods Hole and boarded the Cramer, it was those last sights of Cape
Cod. Like a panoramic photograph it spread beside then behind us in a way that threw up
splendor from within. I saw it in a way that I could never see it when I lived there
because I was so emersed, hidden in the Capeís cracks and crevices then. Now all its
characteristics, its cracked face of rocky beaches, its distinct features of unending tourists
and ice cream and tiny coffee shops dissolved into green and blue masses with bridges
connecting each outstretched hand. The Cramer sailed through and beyond, the Cape
reached side to side before me as if from an invisible fault line until the scenery
climaxed, then dwindled into a little evening twinkle of lights in the distance that soon
sunk below the horizon, as though the sunset had been shattered and made to drown in a
thousand pieces.
Since that night, this is the first time Iíve seen land and it makes my stomach turn
with nervous anticipation. It reminds me of home and all the standards Iíve cast away
since I came to S.E.A., because home to me now are just ink blotches in the distance.
C164 Home Port | Cramer Home Port