Flipping the Cat (For Paul)

It was done, once
A day of sailing
On White Bear Lake
We three on an
Ancient leaf green Spirit cat
Darting in and out
Between gull white blunt-nosed
Scows in diaphanous regatta.

Then sandwiches on the
Sandy shore and the grave
Responsibility of time running out
But we did not listen to the
Calm voice of reason or sense
It must be done once more,
The citrus of delight squeezed dry of
Every drop of fleeting joy.

So forth we sallied in a freshening
Breeze, our spirit’s soaring in
The sail as the Spirit Cat flew up
Upon her beam in the gusting
Streams of unlikely Great Plains air.

Little we displaced tropic sailors knew
A buffalo gale was close upon us
Black squall clouds from some continental
Hell scuttling up unseen astern
And high above our shoulders.
The green hull leeward sounded
Like a narwhal seeking mackerel or tuna
And did not resurface, the cat stuttered
And then as slowly as you please, rolled her
Stern to starboard, spilling you and I into
The lake.


Then thrash in the water, and avoid the
Smothering sail, and clutch at
The drifting borrowed baseball cap
God willing I will lose nothing to
This water, life nor brother nor boat
And I called to you, and you to me
As we struggled in the cloying fluid.

The prairie gale was on us then
With whitecaps roaring by
The cat’s tramp becoming an anvil
For the hammer of wind
Driving us shoreward and resisting
Our efforts as we tried twice
To right her, refusing help from
Boaters speeding by to shelter.

We screamed and shivered and burned
Our fingers raw on ropes
Hauling and heaving at the hulls
Not knowing if God had our
End in view, but calling to Him still until
The howling wind beached us
On pill hill peninsula below a rich man’s
Mansion high on the bluff.

We flipped the cat upright finally
Walking the impossible mast up the
Slope, but you were hypothermically chilled
And I was tropically exhausted
Steam rolling from beneath my thick
Skin of black neoprene.
We begged a moment’s shelter from the
Lightning and thunder and
Lashing rain from a juvenile babysitter
Tending the requisite two children
In the great house.


The clouds and rain blow on to unknown regious
As they do over lakes on the edge
Of these Great Plains stretching to the infinite west
And the sun wanly betook itself
Of it’s lazy summer afternoon duties once more.
We put out from our sheltering shore
Quivering still with fear and cold and
The extremities of our exertions.

The cat rode low, taking water in an unseen wound
So gratefully we lashed her to a Sea Doo
For the short ride back to the beach and landing
Passing by to port a turtled blue hull
Keel upright like a fin
Another unfortunate sailor.

And I thanked God for my life,
And for the old Spirit cat,
As I had cried aloud to Him for help
In the midst and asked for mine
And yours and for that old boat, too.

And I thank Him yet
For that birthday sail
I will not forget
For the adventure and the bond
Of brothers whom God
Has privileged to brave
The elements of this earth
Powers of the air and sea
Yet lived to tell the tale of it,
And know His love and ours
The better.