Tanked...

[Sean Herron]

Hello...

I wake up on my boat - moored at the yard where I worked once...
I listen to my cat on the deck - sqauking at birds sitting on my lifelines...

That he will never catch...

No hammers - no grinders - no chipping or gougers...
Nothing...

Nothing at all...

Hell - I can almost hear the sun setting every day...

How are things your way - that rhymes...

SH.

[tinhorn]

The first thing I see every morning is the river flowing past my house. When I go outside for a smoke, I can hear the ocean that's a block in the other direction. Gulls, herons, doves, sparrows, geese and mallards in season, and I shot some video of my sweetie feeding some itinerant swans. Cormorants (I think) fly for a few hundred yards with their wingtips barely off the water--screwing with WIG, I'm guessing. Soft-shell crabs try to scare me off their turf when I walk in the river.

In summer lotsa families rent cottages or visit grandma, so no shortage of squealing, swimming kids, or moms in bathing suits. More bikes than cars go by the house. For ten months out of the year, though, it's like a ghost town. The local store sells eggs, milk, and my brand of beer, so I could go for months without leaving the village, except that there's no hardware store.

Bunnies sneak into my yard after dark to eat the seeds the birds spill from the feeder. One of the neighborhood skunks is nearly all white--never saw such a thing before. Saw another coyote trotting up the road the other night, doing his bit to keep us free from feral cats. At night, I can hear a person walking, or a coyote trotting, half a block away. The coyotes like to follow the yellow line on the road.

We must be out of no-see-um season, and it's been breezy enough that mosquitoes haven't bothered me for several days. Nights are warm. Made love on the beach under a full moon last night.

Screw the IRS. They're gonna want even more after my two short sales this year. No worries--there's always somebody trying to sell a piece-of-junk dinghy or canoe on craigslist, and somebody willing to pay good money for a nicely restored dinghy or canoe with a For Sale sign hanging on it. Life could be worse.

[welder/fitter]

Everytime I take a drive, I seem to pass the same old dives
Across the bridge, glance to the right, Allied's drydock comes in sight
Jimmy's got a new barge in, Rick & Ronnie work again
Down the road, before the Quay("kee"), the panamax is floating free
No more ferries, well's run dry, the boys have found another "try"
Doolan, Chipchase, Brown retired, peach fuzzed kids in carharts hired
Waiting on a naval build, one per coast won't keep all filled
But that's for dreams of other men, no matter how long I pretend
The shipyards took the best of me, asbestos should soon set me free
Rotator cuffs & knees on fire, and if I chose but one desire
It'd be to do it one more time, for this I've got no ******* rhyme
a new beginning ain't too late, after all I'm 48
And as I watch a new day dawn, I realize that all along
I've always had the chance to choose to wear another person's shoes
Mike