Sisyphus at Sea, Redux

My buddy Andy died a year ago today. He was a comet streaking through my life and I miss him everyday. I wrote this about him a few years ago. RIP Andy Stover!!!

It stood dry in the yard
cradled in wood,
an old wooden boat
sailing over high grass
and weeds and rocks,
reeking of mildew,
oil and lacquer.

Andy doing what he loved, working on an old wooden sailboat.

It hadn’t seen water
in years and wouldn’t
for years to come
for it had to be perfect,
stripped to its rotted ribs,
ridded of pieces of wood
so swollen and shrunken and worn
from years of neglect
that they’d split and splintered,
had spit out tiny dowels,
had cracked open
and would never again
be watertight.

At least not until
Andy assessed them,
passed judgement
with his quiet eyes,
and ran his knowing hands
along them and felt
in his bones
the decades of that wood
absorbing the power
of the ocean as the boat plowed
at a slant through open water
just off Plum Island.

Andrew Nelson Stover

He would sit silently,
sometimes for a long time,
a cigarette in his right hand,
his left caressing
a dried-out gunnel
or a tarnished green
portal frame of brass
and envision the boat
back on the water.

But that would be a day
long down the road,
long after he would
have his way with its hull
and its cabin with its small sliding door,
would apply his mastery
to its tight cabinetry,
refurbish the mast
and acquire and modify
new sails and rigging. 

He loved the old boat
and its potential
and saw nothing but beauty
in its soft lines,
the blood red paint
flaking above its water line,
the faint thin stripe of white
separating the red from
the faded-out baby blue bottom
that only showed
when the boat
was out of the water.

Before ever starting work
on the boat
he framed a domed cathedral
of long, thin wooden slats
giving wide berth on all sides
and high above it,
then covered his sanctuary
in thick plastic sheathing
so he could work on the boat
throughout the long North Shore winter.

It would not be the last time
he constructed such a protective
shell for his old boat,
for he knew well
the Sisyphean task
of loving an old wooden boat
and keeping it in the water.