One good hour, then long days adrift—no rudder,
paddle, outboard, sail—the narrow beds
docked, each in its own tidy berth.
There’s nothing to do but be here.
Sometimes, he finds his long length stretched out
in a canoe on the Chickahominy river,
bright sky above the gunwales, saw grass
brushing the hull, sometimes in the skiff
his father rowed out to the big ships as a boy.
Always he’s tethered.
As are we, alongside, watching
his hands worry the sheets.
We don’t know which knots he needs to untie—
bowline, clove hitch, sheet bend, square—
if his hands hold the bitter end
or the working end of the line,
or if another force holds him—wind, current, tide.
All we know is
his hands were the hands that held us.