Neptune

(As read at the Gazebo in Oceanside -- August 19, 2013)

The name of this poem is

Neptune

I

They call me Neptune

And I knew, just by the nature of who “They” were

That they meant something else by it.

They weren’t referring to me as any mighty King of the Sea.

I wasn’t a strong swimmer back then.

They weren’t referring to any skill I may have with tridents and other forked weapons.

I make no disclosures as to why I know that.

Finally, I was told.

We call you Neptune. 

You’re on the team. 

But you’re a long way from the center of things around here.

It’s true

I’m on the team.

The whiffle ball team

The Mets

The team that drank in the basement, and any place else they’d let us

The group that despised the government, and knew our history well enough to tell you why.

The group that made stages ring alive

The guys who would drive in anything, so long as we were moving forward

The guys who could make it sound that we were more in touch with our feelings than the girls were, but rarely knew what to do with the information. 

The guys who didn’t own a boat amongst the lot of us, but could always find someone to take us out for a sail or give us the wheel going out of the canal.

I’m on the team.

They call me Neptune

II

We all float and let the tide take us out

One guy sees something worth holding onto,

A woman,

The right amount of light on the water,

A task,

He swims towards it, and secures his place around it. 

Now, a new satellite in orbit; a new buoy in the water.

And another guy sees something, and another,

And soon I realize that I am floating alone out there. 

Everyone else saw something and swam for it. 

Nothing seemed worth grabbing.

Or maybe my senses are too dull.

I didn’t see what I was looking at. 

I didn’t know that things would be harder to find.

I kept drifting out on the sea

So  --- That

Although I was never the best swimmer, floater, boater, fisher,

I find myself

Just from the mere passage of time and distance, the most experienced person out there,

the one who has been the furthest, and seen the most, of whatever there is to see. 

The one who could provide the most help out there to the people who need it. 

I have become Neptune the protector of the sea.

They call me Neptune

III

No God I. 

It was the fellas that named me Neptune.

Discard any notion that there was a grand design in mind

To the great notoriety we achieved

Individually and collectively,

Or that my presence at the end of the world had any impact on the entire unlikely enterprise

Perhaps it was one of the group

Or luck

Or cosmic disturbances way beyond anyone’s control.

 

Because

I

Could

Never determine if I was being praised or criticized,

Never determine if I even thought these things

Made me

Worthy of praise or

Worthy of all the benefits that I never considered,

But were bestowed upon me by virtue of my being somewhere else at the time.

Neptune. 

My enormous beard and my small feet responsible for great expanses. 

At the edge of the sea

At the furthest outpost of the solar system.

IV

They said anyone could do it.

That the set-up was tailor made.

And it’s possible that anyone could have done it.

But I was the one who did do it.

All those miles and years away from home

***

All the times some guy floated up to me

And said, “Is there anything else?”

And I said, “This is as far as I go.”

And each one would say,

“Well, I did what I came to do, and now I’m heading back, do you want to join me, I could use the Company?”

And I said, “No”. 

Time after time, year after year. 

Sometimes, I’d slip and say, “I can’t”,

As though I was still the same boy I was when I was floating out

As though I was unable to master my body against the tide.

They’d say other things too. 

Sometimes I would get some news,

But mostly they had the same requests and

I had the same responses.

Until I could barely remember why I’d say what I said,

Or whether what I said still was helpful,

Still made sense.

And I came to believe that my greatest accomplishment

Was

That

I was able to spare some other poor soul the drudgery of doing what I had done.

And more time passed, and I was finally able to carry all the things I saw,

And all the ways I reacted to it, all in my body and all at the same time.

I, Neptune, finally felt hydrated again.

And the next time someone swam up to me and told me that he was heading back.

Do I want to join him?

I said sure.

I, Neptune, was heading towards land.

 

V

When the announcement was made several years ago,

I was so glad that I was Neptune, that they didn’t call me Pluto. 

 

Pluto -- it was explained to me,

As we did one last pour to celebrate everyone’s long journey home –

A time where we were finally forced to understand the meaning of yet another cliché

Pluto is the name of a dog.