Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GRAPPLING, by ROBERT J. CLAWSON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GRAPPLING, by                     Poet's Biography
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.

You'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 . . .)

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

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

My first turn on the hooks I say,

We've caught a log.

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

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

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.

All 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 . . .)

The grapple picks
a piece of turquoise shirt
and pectoral.

Throw 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 . . .)

The sergeant's on the radio: Roger. Out.

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

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

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

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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