Late this afternoon, I sat on the wooden shoring of Derby Wharf in Salem, near where a replica of the Kalmar Nyckel was tied up; the sky was the overexposed blue of summer that swims with sun and a daymoon hung up in the masts, like a stamp. I watched seagulls and tourists and the burls of reflection forming and breaking on the water, oils of light, bird's-eyes. On the next pier over, a man with his back to me was playing a cornet, but I never made out the tune; I could hear him only when the wind shifted. It was the end of the Salem Maritime Festival, which I hadn't known when I got there. (I went to see the Dutch seascapes at the Peabody Essex Museum. I came home with a book of maritime photographs. The rest of their collections will require hours in the near future.) I didn't go to the contra-dances or aboard the small tall ship, though I walked past someone who had a beautiful face for his turn-of-the-nineteenth-century collar and hat. Even if it was the harbor, I could breathe in salt. This was better than counters and cabinets.
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- 1: That fine girl of mine's on the Georgia Line
- 2: In those days, I still believed in the future
- 3: And even if I can't read it right, everything's a message
- 4: I'll do as much for my true love as any young girl may
- 5: I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living
- 6: We only want the world to know that we support the status quo
- 7: How she'll greet me when she meets me when my ship gets in to port
- 8: Nothing very important
- 9: We rented a glass-bottom boat, we got farther from shore
- 10: Or the ocean's brine will turn to wine
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- Style: Classic for Refried Tablet by and
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