Victory is in the Doing -- Redux!

Here we are, a year & 52 postings later! Thank you!!!

It was a year ago that I committed to my friend George that I would start sharing — in this case posting — my poetry for all to see. For better or worse, I’d get it out of the shadows and into the bright light of the day where friends, family and anyone who’d like can read it, delete it, pass it along, whatever they like. One comforting thing about this digital age is it’s highly unlikely anyone’s using it to line the bottom of their bird cage!

Anyway, it’s been a year!

At the start I made no commitment to a specific frequency of postings. But it didn’t take long before I was posting weekly and I made a personal commitment to maintain that pace, not dogmatically but on average. So, here we are, a year and 52 postings later! And, I can say without question, victory truly is in the doing!

Doing it — it being Along the Way — has brought me a level of joy I could never have imagined. I’ve always loved writing, but this has taken it to an entirely different level. It has awaken a part of me that had been sleepily plodding along for way too long. In that regard, thank you again, George!

And thank all of you for taking the time to read what I’m posting, to comment on it so thoughtfully, and for sharing it with others. It means a lot to me!

There now are more than 100 of you receiving my poems each week and I am incredibly grateful. I hope to double that community this year. So, please pass it along!

Also, to commemorate this one-year mark, I’m re-posting below Sisyphus at Sea, the first poem I shared on Substack last year. It’s one of my favorites. I hope you like it!

Onward.

Rich

Sisyphus at Sea

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.

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,
spit out tiny dowels,
had cracked open
and would never again
be watertight.

My buddy Andy doing what he loves most, working on an old wooden sailboat.

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.

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 flaking blood red paint
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
on the boat
he framed a domed cathedral
of long, thin wooden slats
giving wide berth on all sides of the boat
and high above it,
then covered his sanctuary
in thick plastic sheathing
so he could work on the boat
throughout the 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.