Poems Found in Notebooks #6—I Have Walked Along Shores

"I Have Walked Along Shores" was written on October 23, 1990, in Lincoln City, Oregon, about a week after I tested positive for HIV.

Uncredited photo on the Oregon Coast Beach Connection website

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This series features first drafts of poems found in my notebooks and journals that go back to the 1980s. Each poem will be accompanied by some notes—memoir, context, craft, etc. As you read, bear in mind that the text is a largely unedited draft lifted right out of a notebook—This series is more about process than perfection. Enjoy!

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I Have Walked Along Shores
—Lincoln City, Oregon, October 23, 1990

I have walked along shores 
on the Atlantic coast, where I was born,
Jamaica Bay, Gravesend Bay, Lower New York Bay, 
along the beach in Coney Island,
where amusements skirt the sand beyond the boardwalk,
roller coasters and Ferris wheels, bumper cars,
fun houses, French fries and beer; in Brighton Beach, 
where high-rise apartment terraces look down 
on Poles, Russians, Pakistanis, Koreans,
come to seek freedom and safety on these shores.
I have walked on other Long Island beaches,
Jones Beach as a small child when the waves
pushed me under and I opened my eyes
surrounded by foaming green, sure I would never
find my way back to the surface. Fire Island, 
where reality fades in the bright light of fantasy.
I have walked along shores down in Florida, 
where the Atlantic is semitropical—
In Fort Lauderdale as a high school boy 
on spring break I said goodbye to my first love.
Later the beach in Dania, visiting my mom,
home to a Jai-alai stadium, dog races, 
and depressed real estate.
I have walked along shores.
The banks of the Seine, the Tibur, the Arno,
where as a kid out of college 
I sought to conquer the world, 
but found only endless shores.
I have walked along shores down in Eilat, 
at the top of the Negev, where I stepped into the Mediterranean, 
and drove a sea-urchin splinter through my finger!
Up in Haifa, where the vastness of the sea
frightened me and I felt small and alone 
and unsure, far away from home.
I have walked along shores on the Pacific Coast, 
where I thought about dying, 
the shore of the Pacific Ocean,
along the beach in Lincoln City, Oregon,
where mountains skirt the sand, and houses
nestle in the cliffs above the beach. 

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Notes, mostly personal

I know I’ve equivocated a bit in previous posts about which was the very first poem I wrote as a grownup. I think of a poem from the very end of 1991 as my first “grown-ass poem.” I knew I had written the lines above over a year before that, but I always thought of “I Have Walked Along Shores” as notes toward a poem that never got written—but the fact is, it’s a poem.

I wrote it the living room of my dear friend Gavin Smith and his wife Trish Hausknecht when they were living in Lincoln City, Oregon. The visit was already planned for the last week of October 1990 when I received a positive test result for HIV on October 18. It was as if God had set up the trip knowing I would need a big change of scenery and the company of midwestern stalwarts (they both grew up in Toledo, Ohio) who knew me and loved me for exactly who and what I was.

Even knowing all of that, I was surprised this evening when I opened the notebook and saw that this poem was dated 10/23/90. Wow. Five days after my diagnosis. I remember how emotionally raw I was, but visibly unruffled. I remember telling Gavin the news in his car when he picked me up at the airport—I guess it was the airport in Salem, but that’s only a guess. I remember how calm and quiet he remained, eyes on the road, hands draped casually and confidently over the wheel. Just what I needed. White bread with a heart of gold.

In addition to shopping at Kroger’s where Trish worked at the time (or was that back in Toledo?), the highlights of my stay included trips to the beach and to the old growth forest. I think it was after the visit to the beach that I wrote this poem. It seems pretty clear that I’m riffing on “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes, but I also detect tonal reminiscences of Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and Ginsburg’s “Howl.” Maybe even some Carl Sandburg. All of which seems rather odd to me, because I did not think this was a period when I was yet reading much poetry written after the fall of the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, as I seem to enjoy saying at nearly every turn: There you have it.

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