I've been meaning to tell you this story
I heard about Bogie, or maybe I read it somewhere,
how he was sailing with Flynn, tacking back and forth
between a fleet of tankers steaming back
to the Naval Yard, and he turns to Flynn,
no, wait a minute, it couldn't have been Flynn,
he would have laughed, he was that crazy,
and besides, Flynn knew how to sail,
no, it must have been somebody else,
maybe one of Bogie's buddies out of Yale Drama School,
one of those blonde, faceless types who play
CPAs or laboratory assistants, that kind of thing,
I remember him now, he was on one of those talk shows
saying, Bogie was drinking, but no more than usual and
Oh how he loved that boat, even with the cancer,
and then he's going on about Bogie
suddenly handing him the tiller and dropping
below, mumbling he was tired or wanted
a drink, or maybe Bogie didn't say anything,
all he remembers is screaming down at Bogie
to stop kidding around he had never sailed before
and then looking up at something so huge
he still remembers the rivets, the little orange
aureoles of rust, how he closed his eyes
until he felt something pass over him, or through him,
and then he looked up, saw the tanker's huge, bulbous stern
pulling away like a giant question mark and Bogie
climbing back on deck with that little shitty
embarrassed grin of his, like he wanted to say
he was sorry but he knew it wouldn’t cut it,
and then how Bogie stood there, looking at
the disappearing tanker like it was a
tracking shot in a movie
he was making, except it wasn’t
a movie. And Bogie wasn’t making it.
Not this time.