You should go, he’d said;
more than a decade after his death I set out

geography doesn’t lie
I know where I am, where he was
and I’m trying to get to
I told myself,

warned that the tide comes in fast,
can be half way up the sand before I’d know it
pulling me in, to take back
the land it created, he wrote *

I keep my distance
first time since the pandemic I’d left New York,

joining a group on a whale sighting ferry
watched a whale rise up from the ocean
high as he could, his fins spread out like wings
beautiful as any gull or swan
as if he was about to take off

like everyone aimed my camera at it
not fast enough. Failed to catch what I did
only didn’t know it. Not then. Not until
I’d left this town, looked at the photo I took

saw a part of his humpback revealed
before he was gone, like others
the guide pointed to

in my desire for him to do the impossible,
take off, not be forced back down

I glimpsed the fishermen’s life and
death struggle to escape from poverty
the poet witnessed first hand,

only a short distance out of Provincetown
he’d led me to in his poem,

“Life is harsh here…” he wrote,
the sky sea’s changing colors, make
you forget, marvel at the beautiful atmosphere

not venture past it, as the poet did
and I wasn’t prepared to go

Impossible for him to have known
the life and death struggle to survive
I’d lived through for three years

that when it ended, officially declared
over, heard only, you should go

so, apologies to the poet,
promising to venture further out
next time, do as he asked

tear up some bread to throw out
to the sea gulls* in case he doesn’t make it back

• References and quotes are from “Provincetown” by Leo Connellan
From Provincetown, Curbstone Press, 1995