The 50 Year Anniversary

Doris "DD" Geoffrey
married Phil Derrico
in 1958.

You can't know
your seagoing ways
you can't
you can't know them at all.

I put in
at a likely spot
with a mossy mouth opening to
dark water and brown-edged
blossoms dripping from the
overhanging trees moving and
proving
there's some current here

how can I know
which tributary I chose if I will
come finally
to a delta
the opening
the shiny sea
of which
I know we know
we dream

or instead
narrow and
dwindle and dry up
in a sandy plain
with no trace
that I was here at all?

I cannot live
without water
without swells
without lapping
can you
did Doris
did Phil?

have to leave
this wooden old canoe
in a swampy
and then just muddy woods
with the twigs snapping
and biting
and hurting
our bare feet

and live as pure
land mammals

and live like
the damned.