“The Floating World,” a poem by Steve Surryhne

Poetry

The Floating World
by Steve Surryhne

(Scenes from Gate Five)

(1.) Old Man Mad About Art

Hokusai--

Carves the uncarved block,
exquisite wrist, keen eye,
expert twist of steel burin
etching precise,
fine lines:

graven sea & sky
mountain in distance
fog bank rises
as negative space--
Fuji
floating over the waters,
horizon gone,
In low morning mists:
“Dawn at Isawa”

(“36 Views of Fuji”)

(2.) One View of Tamalpais

Here, the little band of boats
their ragged banners flying
bravely, barely visible as a new day
rolls up the bay
parting curtains of morning mist,
sunspangles
skipping across wavetops.

Gate Five, Waldo Point, the Outlaw Houseboats

sitting in their stink the murky tides rock
the floating gangways tied to the docks
bump the hulls with hollow knocks.

I sit in my home, a flat-bottomed boat,
a converted hay barge with a tiller
angled over the roof of the cabin.

I am aware that raw sewage is dumped daily
in the waters around me--

I row a dinghy out to the main channel
of Richardson Bay for a swim
with Thurber, who barks
at the gulls and being part
lab, loves water, jumps in
the chop and swims with me.

We clamber onto the Vesta,
Don's frail twenty-six foot converted
ChrisCraft pleasure boat gutted of her engine,
anchored out, tied to a block of concrete by a chain,
she bobs in the channel to the wind & waves.
Inside, a little parlor space of knick-knacks
and oddities found around the Gate,
a wood-burning stove, the scent of patchouli
and ashes mingle with the breeze-borne
salt of the air.

(3.) Kailash Shugendo--

...circumambulation of mountains
as meditation practice.
Pilgrims go to Tibet to trek
Mt. Kailash, a real mountain,
a real trek, 52km in fifteen hours
up to the roof of the world.
For us, Mt. Tam will have to do.

(Don:)
“We hiked Mt. Tam all the way
to the summit, circumambulating
as trails permitted. At the top
we sat and chanted and had a beer--
Mt. Tam, the roof
of the world, Milarepa we are here!
On the way down, we dropped in
on Alan Watts at his place in Muir.
We listened to him talk and drank more beer.
            Chain-smoker,
            alcoholic,
            womanizer--
a true Bodhisattva!
He put down Beat Zen.
Pour another round?
Please say when.
I was still high from the mountain crawl
when wham, sudden Satori:
He was a nested Daruma doll!”

(4.) Ukiyo-e

In the floating world all things
sooner or later
come loose, some
find their way into the hands
of we know not who
some break loose,
without a breaker
others, cut,
without a cutter--
all things eventually ride
the waves of the floating world
and drift away
washing up on far shores
sometime, somewhere—or here,
where many things may be found but nothing
is ever lost
for long.
A world with no fixed reference point
like Fuji or Kailash or Tam.

(Einstein, when asked to put General Relativity
in a nutshell: “Something's moving.”)

It is in the pleasures of merely circulating
that circuitous cumulus
are seen going round and round,
the sky too,
a floating world--
Hokusai's sea peak at the point
of collapse, thrown up by
the great heat engine
of the Pacific Ocean.

(5.) Sweet Virginia

Sweet Virginia, my lady
of Loaded Velvets, Exile Stones,
hash and hypnosis
through headphones.
I wake up in her bed,
the morning tangled up in silk sheets,
and watch as she dresses for work--
my sky queen off to rule the streets,
in her aqua blue metermaid uniform.

She gave me shelter,
we spent our silver,
and danced on the wreck
of the Charles Van Damme.

The old bay ferry's remains
like a beached wooden whale,
humped up on dry land,
collapsing in on itself--
the sloping deck still strong enough
to dance upon.

We nestle in my hay barge cabin,
the fog peering in at the portholes
on big dog feet asking to be let in,
the moaning horns out there in the dark.
We roll up together in the thick bolster
serenaded by the celebrated humming toadfish
who sing their mating song from the muddy bottom
of Gate Five, while the gently lapping tide
out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
endlessly rocking, will endlessly
rock us to endless sleep.
Goodnight my Sweet Virginia.

About Steve Surryhne
click to read Bio

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Steve Surryhne was an Associate Lecturer in English Literature at San Francisco State University from 1993-2012. He is currently semi-retired and has recently returned to writing poetry. A native of San Francisco, he was a baby-beat in the sixties, knew some of the beat poets and is now a neo-beat. In his alternate career, he worked in Community Mental Health in San Francisco from 1979-2012. He took first place in the Jack Kerouac Poetry contest in 2015 and has published in The Blue Moon Review and Interpretations. He is currently working on a project with a photographer friend on poem-texts and photos.

Other works by Steve in this issue:
Matisse at SFMOMA (Poetry)