We worked through the summers, cherry stained book on my lap & the soft pink of Simon
wiping the sweat from his lips. In the beginning, the white oak curved out like a giant rib cage,
the bones of some strange alien abandoned on our shore. The fishermen laughed.
Our bodies were small back then, throbbing & hectic from the sun. It didn’t matter.
We dreamt of the horizon, a spool of light on the ocean, all the azures & auburns
unfurling into one another. We didn’t care about the beauty of it—just the water,
the undulating distance & the belief there was a place for us out there if we tried.
Pressing matters suffered—we were entranced, the light, the spin of it on the hull,
the way the world came into focus as we built it, as if somehow we built the light too.
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Gumaste, N. Boat Building in Maine. J Med Humanit 38, 535 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-017-9473-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-017-9473-1