We set sail on a barf bucket with vinyl
seats because I'd read a book about
loneliness and wanted to check the address,
and you were not otherwise indisposed,
checked in at the Compass Rose which
in hindsight seems an apt portent for
wayward youth except in every direction
it pointed to bedspreads crocheted with
seaweed, to a convenience store/Pizza
Shack combo, to drunk teens popping
wheelies on ATVs, to the ocean pinching
the island's chubby cheeks. So naturally
I wriggled away like a kid from a fat aunt,
drove us to the end of the island where
we were figures in a Friedrich painting
watching the sunset as finbacks spread
across the water like the path of a skipped
stone, and I thought that must be the way
to the real island. I will follow it home.
Adam Beardsworth is the author of No Place Like (Gaspereau, 2023) and the critical book Confessional Poetry in the Cold War (Palgrave 2022). He is the general editor of Horseshoe Literary Magazine, and teaches literature at Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Grenfell Campus.