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| FDR's model sailboat Campobello |
Mizzen
noun
1.
the mast aft of a ship's mainmast.
For Jamie, my dear friend
So if you don’t mind, heather of the hillside,
and it’s alright by you, small invincible bird,
I’ll lean on this here boulder
by the old drove road,
and get my eye in, lighting on this and that.
Kathleen Jamie
The Glen
It’s a silence that, like the bottom stair seen
from the top of the crow’s nest, sifts
the wind with its mizzen cut fingers,
through ropes set straight as sheet
music and salvaged maybe from a wreck
once, long ago and offshore, one all hands
were lost on. How they clung to, as the water
lifted and let go lifted and let go.
When the mizzen was raised new, least
and aft and all in one piece, she’d seen
trees, sleek and free of every need
and each branch cut welcome to be any-
thing else but inhibiting the main mast.
How her hoops and rings each and complete
as a first wedding when the sail’s lifted
to the wind and it all floats! heavy as
everything is, and cuts the water and dolphins
play in her wake and maybe outrun her
in the game before they tire and sink
below the waves and the men heave
hoeing. Aft mizzen: she takes on all the back-
ward the wind cuts and heeds to each
creak and bend of the mainsail, every
strain and near fracture, she softens
the inevitable. Small, and her sail’s least
in the breeze, but stern and full curved
the way a half shell is, picked up and listened
to, held close to the cheek by the boy
looking up the beach for the other half
looking and listening, eyes ahead, and ears,
since Sunday, behind. It’s windless
in this break of land. The ship’s just
above the horizon, or below it, he can’t
tell which. Mizzen, mizzen, we all say, reach between
the space that’s been split open, reach
one piece of you in the breeze, one piece
of you in the apathy. And cleave them. Please.
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