a sailing book

samuddo / ocean
2015

a cup-of appears in Otoliths 36. My thanks to Mark Young for his

generosity to me and many other poets. I also thank John Stevenson and others at The Herons Nest for publishing work from this
volume.

a sailing book
copyright 2015 by john martone
isbn 978-1-312-64343-7
print copies available here
samuddo / ocean
johnmartone@gmail.com

a sailing book
the poems dimensions

The path of easy practice is like a pleasant journey on water.

The Buddha said to Ananda and Vaidehi, After you have accomplished the first
contemplation, next practice the visualization of water. Envision the western region as
entirely flooded by water. Then picture the water as clear and pure, and let this vision be
distinctly perceived. Keep your thoughts from being distracted. after you have visualized
the water, envision it becoming frozen. After you have visualized the ice as transparent to
its depth, see it turning into beryl. When you have attained this vision, next imagine that
the beryl ground shines brilliantly, inside and out, and that this ground is supported from
below by columns which are made of diamond and the seven jewels and hung with golden banners. These columns have eight sides and eight corners, each side being adorned
with a hundred jewels. Each jewel emits a thousand rays of light, each ray in turn having
eight-four thousand colors. As they are reflected on the beryl ground, they look like a
thousand kotis of suns, so dazzling that it is impossible to see them in detail.

On this beryl ground, golden paths intercross like a net of cords. The land is
divided into areas made of one or the other of the seven jewels, so the partitions are quite
distinct. Each jewel emits a flood of light in five hundred colors. The light appears in the
shape of a flower or a star or the moon; suspended in the sky, it turns into a platform of
light on which there are ten million pavilions made of a hundred jewels. Both sides of this
platform are adorned with a hundred kotis of flowered banners and innumerable musical
instruments. As eight pure breezes arise from the light and play the musical instruments,
they proclaim the truths of suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and no-self. This is the
visualizing of the water ...
Contemplation Sutra, 10

Rahula, develop meditation that is like water; for when you develop meditation that is
like water, arisen agreeable and disagreeable contacts will not invade your mind and remain. Just as people wash clean things and dirty things, excrement, urine, spittle, pus, and
blood in water, and the water is not horrified, humiliated, and disgusted because of that,
so too, develop meditation that is like water, arisen agreeable and disagreeable contacts
will not invade your mind and remain.

The Greater Discourse of Advice to Rahula.

I called mothers name as Namu Amida Butsu in my youthful mind.

Hozen Seki

sailboat masts
those pine trees
drop their needles

rain

writing
on
herself

new sunfish sail

unfolded
fills his room

didnt know
its a living
sail

before & after

english words
sailboat sail

hundred-year-old
leaky garage
holds a sailboat

every line
a mind of its own!

you strike a match & melt

polypropylene ropes
bitter end

slips thru
your
fingers
practice
w/
a
poly
line

bowline

sooner or later
second nature

o sailboat

no longer needing
sawhorses!

Out of your hands

Shoulder boat pierside and lower into lake. Then mast, sail, daggerboard, tiller &
rudder, which you should have attached first of all. Flags stand out straight, pulling at
their poles gusting wind doesnt let up to let you understand. No idea what hes doing, fool sets out. An hours tumult. A moments. Youre finally an incompetent after all,
drenched & shivering, talking to the boat now, that live one, living being. Everything
happens outside yourself, who somehow return, with no trace of skill.

luffing
sail

drifting watching him

tangle with sail
gulls have it easy

human
speech

bits of shore
flit past
the sail is white

10

honestly

dry your clothes on the line

after sailing

11

he builds a model
wooden ship to set
beside his buddha

hearing
cabinets
glass door

his glass
cabinet
well-built
as sailboat
inside

12

autumn nights
bifocals
rig a sloop

it rains
he patches
a sail
gale force 10
an antique sloop
sails in the window

singlehanded
rain from
what sea
on
the way
there

13

north wind
every circle
a great circle

meeting halfway
spiderling sailing
to your boat

mainsail sheet
between his teeth
a sometime spider

spiderlings
sailing line
puts you to shame

14

hurry sailboat
he can feel
amyloid plaques take shape

15

Are there not people who can spend hours watching the rain as it falls? I once read
somewhere that three things could never be boring: passing clouds, dancing flames, and
running water. They are not the only ones. ...
Vito Dumas

out on the lake knew this rain was coming

close-hauled

every
sinew

fall leaves blow

in a sailors face

sailing
in rain

dont be dramatic
its an inch of rain
in the boat

16

after that storm

he stands on the dock
& applauds

17

turtles
were struggling

sailing
sloop

from
their eggs

picture
book

when
you woke
from
that dream

one last graybeard

library
closes

settle
of course
a book
of knots

18

a cup-of

poems found in Francis Chichesters

Alone Across the Atlantic (Garden City:
Doubleday & Co., 1961)

a weep

at the forehatch
over
my berth

19

1630 hrs
written
over
a cup
of tea
in
a bag
which you
hang
in the
cup
& pour
water
on

20

thank heaven
& martin tickell
for the trysail

take off my boots

& trousers together
& put them on
together next time

hullo
shes tacked
herself

& boxes
the compass
again

21

now for a cup-of

& position-fixing
by radio beacons

found to my
astonishment
yesterday
was friday

22

dropped
my barometer
tonight
& bust it
an old friend

lost the red

gash bucket
overboard
looked very cocky
sitting scarlet
on the surface
sorry
to see
it go

23

no

vital
parts
washed
over
board

knowing exactly where

is not so essential
in the mid-Atlantic

a kettle flies across the cabin

24

no one
inside
he bites
his lip

his sailboat on horses

he repots a pine

as
after
given

all his bad decisions in life a bonsai cedar

under a blanket
in a chair in his room
still sailing

25

some sail
that dream
catcher

windless
days
practice
knots

snagged
a window
blind

calm

not even his washline stirs

washlines close as youll get to a tall ship

26

Every sentient being has its own Buddha land.

Hozen Seki

wooden steps
above the waves
rotten thru
Your first step

into the woods around this lake

(& all the worlds woods surround this

lake all Siberia, Labrador wilds, all sequoias & Mekong jungle, Arran isle & Ise)
that constant chanting startles you, soundless, with every step farther, out of nowhere,
naturally, with no intention on your part, calling you, the others soundlessness.
Acer, amitabha, betula, plantanus, nussa, carya, diospyros, cercis, quercus, maclura, liriodendron, cornus all names revert to phonemes, then wind stirring leaf-fall this time of year,
this season from serere to sow this homesickness, heimweh, malato di nostalgia, nho
nha, a di a. You look out over those waters.

hills around
the lake are
slower waves

hearing someone
behind you
another wave

someone

you lose sight

of the lake

reaching up
another wave

in a deer
skeleton
27

thinking of home
mari
time
paint
to scrape
there
one
bright
day

boatyard
keels bare
to sun

28

crooked garage
sailboat & tools
paint cans a cot

the trucks are gone

that williston park garage is gone
& uncles andrew & marty
who worked there

enjoys his pasta after sailing

29

wanders around
inside that house
gone sailing

sailing
or drifting?
farther

Homesick

sailboat shows you how to feel. Becalmed at center, just a breath of wind,
sail luffing, eyes circle the circle shore. Ever since even in childhood thus not
here, thus come. How odd Mendeleev-made & nothing more (than sunfish, squirrel,
seagull) & Mendel-written from Cold Spring Harbor a molecule. Do the orbitals
sense loss on a lake smooth as this?
Youd nearly forgotten about the partial eclipse going on above maybe the last of this
life, this life. You look up at that fusion, that cure-all. You wanted to be on the lake for
it, right at the center, and now at its greatest, the eclipse nothing another nimbus cloud
couldnt do, does now. Theres that wind shadow to penumbra on this lake. Your own
just passed.
come to the center
a white sail
luffs

30

nights
theres no
life jacket

never seen
lake so still
whip-poor-will

furled in darkness
sail is
bone-white
nightfall
lift your boat
from the lake
built a cart
to pull his sailboat
o this world
nights
his window
on-off on-off

31

sailors myth (1958)

poured a cup of water
in the boys ear to set
that butterfly free

whitecaps are people too

really moving
bare feet hang
over the gunnel

sailing in whitecaps
amoebas & desmids
flying too!

are you
a form
of light
in water

sail-shape
in shreds
(whitecap)

an offering

or of
water
in light

waves lift
the hull

32

square knot

kinks come out

of a rope
dragged thru water

holding all
this time

a bubble of wind
in your sail
a bubble on the water

coming about

at dusk a sailboat
practices
coming about

coming about again

right hand
holds the tiller
behind you

wind
& gravity

you hike far out

33

Not to be

blown into reeds and fallen trees on south bank, just east of you, you
cast off then paddle out before raising sail, but youre on the wrong side of the boom
and suddenly everythings a tangle your cap gone and boat filling with water.
Youre just where you didnt want to be & were bound to wind up, a real fool. The
only grace is that youre in the winds shadow now. You bale away half a boatful and
get things right. The mainsheet tied itself to your ankle and spiralled around the
tiller, but you free yourself and out of the reeds, hanging up for a moment on the
fallen tree, and then raise sail for a wild ride.

keep out
those reeds
out of
a myth

no one else sees

a sailboat glide thru
those branches

34

beaufort scale
Sky singing in pain, small boats should not go out, and you struggle to stand facing NNE.
The waters surface blows off in bedsheets. The skin of your face as well. The docks rise
& fall underfoot unbalances you.
a heron flies
into the gale
on level wings
Youre here to watch & freeze as the lake does. The architecture appears angular
roofs & spume-flowers, lines of foam, nets of crushed water tangle in gusts, diatoms &
desmids tumble in Hubble clouds, a million pavilions of a hundred jewels can you
see theres nothing of you in this wind blasting the truth of suffering, emptiness,
impermanence & no-self. Poor fool youll catch your death a cold.

35

the lake

in your mouth

that breeze

rin

bea

mainsheet
tiller

36

tensioned

finally
A stiff one, SW. Put in and youre carried out, running with it, all the way out, and scarcely thinking you dont like this lack of control capsize midlake in 40o water. Legs tangled in
rigging (so many entanglements), when you reach up, pull down on the daggerboard to
right the boat, you only drag youself under and get lungsful. Then, working free of those
lines, youre too weak to reach up so high again. A blue cirrus-streaked sky above. Waterlogged clothes -- three layers for warmth -- suck you down, and that life-vest wants to slip
off over your head. Shout. Shout, but youre far out, and there isnt another boat on the
lake, or soul on shore. Youd been happy to have this world to yourself.
You make your way stern, clutch the inverted rudder wind pushing boat & you farther
out. Chin & nostrils above water how long. You push the thought out of mind that hands
will let go. Beyond the dying/ what is there to do
Legs kick thru bottomlessness, & nothing rises to hold you up. Forty minutes. Then one
remains. There is one. And there is one. Elbows bent, hands clasped. Water is darker than
ever thought; darkness has no substance out of the cradle, how that poem ends. Somewhere a gas engine grinds. Arms reach under yours. An unseeable face comes close. You
close your eyes and keep them closed for the light.
In another universe, your body drifts face down to shore. In this, youre the first one the
divers have brought back alive, lips blue, core 89o. You feel them cut thru layers of water-logged cocoon, those deadly clothes. A whole body shivers uncontrollably. Your glasses
are gone, of all blessed things; leaving you to stagger tomorrow, half-sighted in a hospital
hall.
he leaves the deer
half-skinned
& saves you from drowning

37

halyard
his saline drip

gunwales
hospital
bedrails

dying of thirst
reaching
for an apple

november 9
after the capsize
you sleep with a light on

they ask somewhat sadly & you live alone

38

sailors home
everywhere you look
buddhas image

a buddha
sitting so
binnacle

39

yes there are

boats in this
mandala

autumn leaves
how the skin
can turn gold

cirrus
clouds curl those
beckoning fingers

sail stitch after stitch

into this wind
the fabric holds

40

lie down in your boat

white sail white cloud
the end

41

42