[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

It’s the last POETS Day under the Biden Administration. Put an early Friday lid on it and Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

Hit the beach and take a nap, ride a precarious bike, have some ice cream and meet the people. That hair ain’t gonna smell itself, Jack. Whatever you do, don’t waste the day working. It’s practically the weekend.

Literally take a minute for a little verse first.

***

In 1897, Stephen Crane was on a ship that sank. Subsequently, he spent thirty or so hours in a lifeboat with the ship’s captain and two crewmen. After getting safely back to New York, he wrote a short story called “The Open Boat” about the adventure. It’s harrowing.

“A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats… As each slaty wall of water approached, it shut all else from the view of the men in the boat, and it was not difficult to imagine that this particular wave was the final outburst of the ocean, the last effort of the grim water.”

He does a good job putting you in the boat – putting anxiety in you – surrounded and claustrophobic in the troughs and hoping while knowing better you’d glimpse salvation somewhere on the horizon from the crests. Eventually the lifeboat flipped and they swam for it. Three made it to shore, Daytona Beach, sixty-two years before it was a NASCAR draw.