The deckhand’s left-hand glove
washed up some two days later,
but of his hand, as you’d expect,
there was no sign.
- he bled and lived -
a careful man that Fogarty,
signing everything he owned,
his gloves, even his wife, some said,
thick felt-tip with his nickname.

It must have been some storm,
cast up thick cabled kelp and holdfasts,
trees, old nets, whale vertebrae
and three more gloves, always the same.

I don’t know why that hand,
loss often is one-sided,
that place you cannot touch again
but for me the sea stopped sucking
at my soul, my feet, so many years ago.
So now I walk, where tired gulls
face the dying wind, the falling sun.

When they sent him home
he asked me for it back.
I never told you his nickname, did I?
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