Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GRAPPLING by ROBERT J. CLAWSON

First Line: THE SERGEANT SETS THE THROTTLE: TROLL
Subject(s): DIVING & DIVERS; MARINES – UNITED STATES;
New River, Snead's Ferry, NC, circa 1950

The sergeant sets the throttle: troll.

@3You're marines. You'll take turns with the hooks.
If we hook him and he surfaces,
don't look at the colonel's eyes,
unless you want him watching you
the rest of your lives.

(. . . the colonel's bobbing, loon-wet head, nostrils
gorged with algae . . .)@1

Rain for days. The estuarial gray's
gone toffee-brown. The marshes' grass mats
decompose. Shellfish strain decay.

@3(. . . squirrel rotting in the mess hall's ceiling . . .
sweet-and-sour soup . . .)@1

My first turn on the hooks I say,

@3We've caught a log.@1

The log's lurch settles in my gut.
It surfaces: threadbare, Goodyear.
A chopper whops overhead.

@3(. . . he tasted it, till packed silt drove his teeth past
grimace, tossed his SOS-ing tongue . . .)@1

The limb I'm hooked to now
peels from the trunk. It's small, but turns
like toweling in our wake.
Four mushrooms sprout:
fingers. Then a thin black wrist,
a black bicep, armpit, some lat.

@3All I got is arm. A skinny black kid! Come about.

Throw it back!

(. . . I relish gale surf, the rush to crackling rock . . .
our rubber boat scrunching sand . . .)@1

The grapple picks
a piece of turquoise shirt
and pectoral.

@3Throw that back too.

He's only five feet down. Can I just dive?

(. . . moonless trips across Trapp's Bay for heaps of
crabs, hogs of beer, Snead's Ferry's hook . . .)@1

The sergeant's on the radio: @3Roger. Out@1.

@3Kid, this ain't your day.
Some smartass flyboy's found our man.
That's it. Stow that grapple in your lap.@1

Through outboard spray, I watch
the harnessed, swinging silhouette
rise into the olive bird.
The colonel's corpus leaves first-class.

@3(... told our waitress, Twyla, that New River was
oldest in America ... she didn't bite.)@1

I coil the rope. My hands ooze blood.
I taste my finger: too much salt.
Ashore, a crow rips gristle from a whelk.





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