Roger's Waist

Roger’s waist was the linchpin when we launched “The Rose” off Garrison’s Cove on Bailey Island. He let out the rope around his belt as she slid off the trailer at high tide. We weren’t young back then, but barely young enough to pull it off. I was from a river-boating family back in Pittsburgh where some folks cleated shell boats to docks, and drank on them all summer. Not that we were soberists here later in Maine, No—there’s still case of Grey Goose in my garage for Roger, which is an old-testament joke about what God thinks about our plans. Stephanie painted wine glasses on Roger’s 70th and a broken stem among them will become an offering to Poseidon on the rocks this fall when we break them, and next summer’s miracle of sea glass washed up in oath and mystery in the natural orders of myth. Cook’s Lobster House is also on Bailey down Garrison’s Cove Road and the launch ramp there looping around the bend reminds me me of fulcrums, linchpins and hinges-- how they all love a good turn, rope-let launches and unraveling yarns, midnight clinkers. We should all plan to croak from the moment of birth, but we don’t-- the former having been so traumatic that we can’t remember it. The boats find a way of slipping in.