disaster

Today is the 102nd anniversary of the R.M.S. Titanic's collision with the iceberg at 11:40 p.m. The ship sank at 2:20 a.m. on the 15th. This is a poem by Sandy Yannone, my dear teacher and the beloved Writing Center director at Evergreen. She and I share a curious, or maybe not-so-curious, devotion to the Titanic disaster. This poem speaks to much more than that though. It's maybe one of my favorite poems ever.


Maiden Voyage

"I remember this now: a Sunday,
as they mostly always were, late fall, I was
bending over into the back seat of the car
to rearrange the automotive landscape.

Her fingers reached over, gently pressing
my spine like silver flute keys.
I heard the solo even as I felt it, fingered
for a long time, and by long I mean

still. I wish I had straightened up, turned,
and kissed her, a new song,
a tender response to everything
I’ve felt since and after and before

and after her playing my flute. Or
was her hand just warming up,
practicing, before it would leave, needing
a stable place to tap out its questions,

send telegraphs into the sky like Harold Bride
and Jack Phillips sent for days before –
tapping out jovial messages from the first
class passengers on board Titanic

in their delirious denial – so busy
the new Marconi operators could barely keep up
with the news flooding in of impending ice
like the fall before a brutal winter. Except

it was spring, as it is now, just weeks away
from the anniversary of her sinking. I wish
I had made a move that afternoon, used
the binoculars to see the iceberg in time

to turn the ship, to turn around and look
back to kiss her one first time, fold up
like a nautical chart. But I stayed half
bent in the car, asleep at the helm,

while her hand circumnavigated my back. I kept
the memory of that and wrote this poem
instead. And Jack will go down with the ship,
And Harold Bride will survive, and I’m not sure

which one I am and which one is she
or which relics of what we are to each other
will be recovered years later
from the depths of this sea, placed under

glass in an exhibit never called wreckage,
although that’s what all this is, and maybe
all a maiden voyage is ever meant to be."