Song of the Scrimshoner Beatrix, Called Billy at Sea
June Gervais
One last night in the arms of my common-law wife
and then I went to sea, breasts bound, no beard,
but arrayed as a man—a trick easier pulled
on land, as I learned by the next new moon.
Don’t want to tell that story.
Tell you
instead
how it was
I came to be
a scrimshoner
We were water-gazers she & I, belted round by no purse,
empty purse, shabby penny, her charm was every riches,
mazy her body, oh let me sally out upon it. Oh she was
new-mown grass. Oh the farrago of roses and clover
she was. Oh what her mouth could do.
But then
decided I’d sign on for the money to come,
money to come home. First night at sea, a dream-devil
told me of my foolishness. Every roll of the wave
I wanted her sealskin languor above and below
me again. Whaling barque. Plaguey place.
And then
with the first sperm whale I got a tooth and a crude
ship’s needle, tobacco juice and candle black
for the grooves. Nights and nights I spent on my
wife’s likeness. Carved her like silk and milk, like
a potion of gin and molasses, and came to know
if you carve a line for a lover,
any sort of line,
you can meet her in dreams
you can
we did
She was stung by a serpent in my absence,
and not a snake. Devil fetch the harpooneer.
I saw it in dreams and grieved. Made her another
skrimshander with her swollen belly so
she’d know I loved her still. My Life, I said,
I will raise it as my child
and I will
I would
I would have
You in two hundred years with your cigarette case that glows
You can museum her portrait alongside knots of human hair and
shipwreck dishes and ivory saws, go make of it a still life: it’s still
behind the glass breathing. Thought I’d die on the whaler and she’d live
a widow or find safety with a man on land. Vanished handkerchiefs.
Nothing
changes
what I made
You can split November asunder
You’ll never thieve our April
In dreams she tells me Carve me revenge, carve me
into a spirit plaguing the house of the harpooneer
I say No. I draw you with milky breasts and softened hips
I draw us in May, June, midsummer night, I carve us
Lammas loaves. I will never cease to be a scrimshoner
We live
in this last empty line
We are water-gazers
she & I
June Gervais
June Gervais is the author of the novel Jobs for Girls with Artistic Flair (Penguin Books), as well as a poet and essayist whose work can be found in Lit Hub, Writer's Digest, The North American Review, The Missouri Review, RHINO, Cream City Review, The Pinch, The Common, Cordella, and elsewhere. She has lived by the ocean most of her life and performed sea chanteys, ballads, and other traditional music of the sea at whaling museums, festivals, and historical societies in the Northeastern United States. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars.