by Nick Tabone | May 25, 2022 | Non-fiction
The Science Centre sold glow in the dark stickers of the stars in their gift shop. I came home from a field trip with a pack and stuck them to my bedroom ceiling. My own universe. A cosmos of my own...
by Nick Tabone | May 16, 2022 | Non-fiction
A low mist lies over iron country as we slide through the piers and into the harbour shared by the ‘Twin Ports’ of Superior, Wisconsin and Duluth, Minnesota, accompanied by a lazy swell that slouches shoreward along with...
by Nick Tabone | May 7, 2022 | Non-fiction, Uncategorized
Anxiety is a bear whose breath is always hot on my heels but it was a greyhound that got me. I was enjoying a mid-morning run when the dog lunged, tore the lead from its elderly owners hand, and bit me on the back. Some runs are so good they feel almost...
by Nick Tabone | Apr 18, 2022 | Non-fiction, Uncategorized
“For the beautiful is nothing other than the onset Of what is terrifying. “ Rilke I was eight years old when I killed the family dog on a warm Good Friday in early April. The night before I’d lain in bed and said prayers in my head. The usual rushed...
by Nick Tabone | Mar 23, 2022 | Non-fiction
“It is a rare thing to live through a moment of huge historic consequence and understand in real time what it is.” The BBC My childhood friend John kept fish and he passed this hobby on to me. Together, we’d take the subway north and in the dim and humid...
by Nick Tabone | Feb 13, 2022 | Poetry
In the dry seasonthe porcupines head to higher ground. Or so my cousin tells me.“There’s an expression round here,” he says,“Whereby if you see someone walking alonein the dead of night, you tell them’Come un porcospino.’”My cousin tells me lots of things.We are...
by Nick Tabone | Feb 2, 2022 | Non-fiction
Last night I dreamt a dream within a dream of an old woman who kept cows in a pasture beside a small forest. There was a circular path that ran through the woods upon which she would walk her cows every day. Round and...
by Nick Tabone | Jan 12, 2022 | Non-fiction
Anyone who has had a dog will know the sound. A repetitive retch, pitched somewhere between a gulp, a glug and a burp, accompanied by the dog’s whole-body heaving back and forth in slow but violent seizure, while the head bobs like Suzanna Hoffs when she...
by Nick Tabone | Nov 27, 2021 | Non-fiction, Uncategorized
Frankie was running low on smokes and he was worried about it. He’d packed enough for the five-day steam from Halifax to Norfolk but had failed to consider random US customs kerfuffle’s, one of which had put us at anchor ten...
by Nick Tabone | Nov 18, 2021 | Non-fiction
“The sea was angry that day my friends. Like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli.” George Costanza Two massive storm systems were set to converge in the North Atlantic and we planned to Indiana Jones it, and slide through the narrowing gap...
by Nick Tabone | Nov 14, 2021 | Non-fiction
There’s a pile up at the Soo Locks. Seven cargo ships all wanting up or down. We are sixth in line and take the upper wall to wait beneath the Sault Sainte-Marie International Bridge. It’s 0330 and it will be hours before we get the...
by Nick Tabone | Nov 7, 2021 | Non-fiction
‘It is too early for snow,’ said the first mate as we made the big turn at Johnstone’s Point, a near 90˚ bend in the upbound section of the St. Marys River. His inflection betrayed genuine puzzlement. In the few hours since we had cleared Detour...
by Nick Tabone | Sep 28, 2021 | Non-fiction
A little after midnight Dawson emerged from cargo hold five. It was blowing a full gale and the temperature had dropped to -25˚C with the windchill. He stood over the narrow hatch and hand over handed the 75’ length of one inch hose up from...
by Nick Tabone | Sep 17, 2021 | Non-fiction
Back-to-back trips across Lake Superior carrying iron ore eastbound in our belly for the Soo. Last night was black and starless, with a brisk southerly and an ever-increasing swell. Lightning flickered...
by Nick Tabone | Sep 5, 2021 | Non-fiction
‘I’ll never forget the date,’ he said, ‘December 6th, 1989. It was the day those girls were murdered.’ The captain is referring to the massacre of fourteen female students by Marc Lepine at the Ecole Polytechnique...
by Nick Tabone | Aug 12, 2021 | Non-fiction
She had been lamentably christened the Mist of Avalon by the previous owner, but we all called her ‘Mist’. Built of Douglas Fir in 1967, years of neglect had left her hull in a sorry state and while it is not uncommon for wooden boats to leak, the ingress...
by Nick Tabone | Jul 23, 2021 | Non-fiction, Uncategorized
“They don’t call it Marble Hell for nuthin”, the captain says as we line the ship up for a tie-up at Marblehead stone dock in Ohio. From the wheel I can see white water breaking over the pier where the load rig is situated; at the end of a long conveyer belt that runs...
by Nick Tabone | Jul 10, 2021 | Non-fiction
Trouble is a communal creature and it has found a pleasant place to roost right here these past two weeks. There have been two major fuel leaks on the main engine and multiple mechanical...
by Nick Tabone | Jun 28, 2021 | Non-fiction
There is a tale my father tells, of when, new to this continent, on a sweltering spring day, during an excursion in the North Ontario bush, he sought to relieve the onerous heat by stripping down and leaping into a pond of stagnant water. A damn fool...
by Nick Tabone | Jun 10, 2021 | Non-fiction
‘We tell ourselves stories in order to live.’ Joan Didion I have become a man who feeds birds. Not in the sad and lonely old man on a park bench scattering breadcrumbs at his feet kind of way. Rather I bought a bird feeder and a...
by Nick Tabone | Jun 2, 2021 | Non-fiction
Virtually everything I’ve written these past two years features a bird in it somewhere. There was the small goldfinch skittering up the deck as I did a round of soundings approaching Parry Sound or the bald eagle’s dogged pursuit of a seagull in the...
by Nick Tabone | May 17, 2021 | Non-fiction
Morning. 0745. Up on the ship’s bridge to relieve the watch. So bright! These first warm days; always so redolent with smell and memory. Alex, the 4-8 wheelsman, be-toqued, be-blundstoned and be-bearded, directs my...
by Nick Tabone | May 12, 2021 | Non-fiction
‘I know what’s going to happen. I’m going to go for a run tomorrow morning and I’m going to overdo it, and I’m probably going to hurt myself.’ That’s what I told Jeff. We were standing outside, drinking a beer as the final minutes fell out from the interminable...
by Nick Tabone | May 7, 2021 | Non-fiction
Weltanschauung; noun 1. a comprehensive conception or image of the universe and of humanity’s relation to it. 2. worldview. The time of our quarantine draws to a close. Travel plans are being made. The last round of testing did...
by Nick Tabone | May 1, 2021 | Non-fiction
“We’re all of us haunted by our thoughts. So make friends with a ghost. It ain’t goin’ fuckin’ anywhere.” Al Swearingen, Deadwood the Movie There is a fox outside my window. I’ve seen him early mornings. He scavenges the local dumpsters...
by Nick Tabone | Apr 26, 2021 | Non-fiction
It was that dark hour just before the dawn when I came out on deck for tie-up in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I took my position on the port quarter, ready to call spots for the captain should he need them. My tea steamed in its travel mug. Up...
by Nick Tabone | Apr 15, 2021 | Non-fiction
Trade on the Great Lakes slows to a trickle for a couple of months each year as the St. Lawrence seaway and the Welland Canal close for maintenance and the various fleets which operate in the region lay their ships up for work of their own...
by Nick Tabone | Apr 2, 2021 | Poetry
Never one for goodbyeshe slips away before suns first light. His getaway, a taxicabon black roads varnished with dew. A thief in the night, his belongings in the boot and a head full of jewels and sadness.
by Nick Tabone | Mar 26, 2021 | Non-fiction
for Mark and Emma I was a paperboy. Cold mornings, I would rise before the sun and gather the bundles of papers that had been left in stacks on the front porch overnight. I’d cut the tough, plastic bindings and assemble the various sections of newspaper and...
by Nick Tabone | Mar 14, 2021 | Non-fiction
He had a business card which read, Patrick J. Kerns – Rogue Sailor of the Seven SeasKegs Drained, Sea Monsters Trained and Virgins Converted. I met him in the summer of ’93, when I was a skinny and small 17 year old. Six of us teens signed aboard the Full-Rigged...
by Nick Tabone | Mar 9, 2021 | Fiction
By his own estimation, Jim had never been much of a man. He was no good at sports, he didn’t know how to throw a punch and he had a small, wiry physique a gym teacher at high school once described as ‘runty.’ He tapped on the steering wheel impatiently as he...
by Nick Tabone | Mar 1, 2021 | Non-fiction
658 days ago, on a brief furlough between ships, I ran alongside the Welland Canal in Southern Ontario. It was a sunny day, one of the first warm days that spring. It felt good, not all runs do. As I ran, I was playing with words in my...
by Nick Tabone | Feb 22, 2021 | Non-fiction
We are following a meandering country path. The way is led by a sea of Lellux (a local yellow flower) and an enthusiastic nine year old named Izzy. The almond trees are in bloom and their thin branches reach over stone walls, the pink and white...
by Nick Tabone | Feb 16, 2021 | Non-fiction
for Maurice, Moira, Veronica and Patrick Follow me down a narrow country lane. High, dry stone walls sheathe the road tightly and small birds flit back and forth between them. The sky is an incandescent blue and the sun is high up in...
by Nick Tabone | Feb 11, 2021 | Fiction
I. Every day after work, the old man walked his dog in the woods downtown. The city had veins of wooded trails running through it and he liked to walk on them and when he felt the soil beneath his feet and the shade of the tall trees’ canopy, he could close his eyes...
by Nick Tabone | Feb 9, 2021 | Poetry
Some days, I’ll run around a walled city. And inside a walled city. Beside a Grand Harbourand opposite other walled cities. I’ll run beneath great walls that slope upwards to battlements and gardens where the branches of tall carobspeek out over the...
by Nick Tabone | Jan 25, 2021 | Poetry
I have demons. They’re like the angry mob in old Westerns. The ones that clamour outside the sheriff’s office. Their goats gottenby loose tonguesat the saloonand too muchcheap whiskey. I’ve just woken from a sleepthat would be a good dry run...
by Nick Tabone | Jan 17, 2021 | Non-fiction
Another sailing season is over. The big ships have been put to bed: their cargoes carried, their ballast out, their soft lines snugging them safe ashore, their sailors’ now home for a rest. Back in the city warm temperatures prevail. This isn’t...
by Nick Tabone | Jan 5, 2021 | Poetry
All his life he’s wished for streets like these,clear of crowds and vehicles, the downtown of his teenage dreams.Right angles, steps and rails, endless grindable seams. With patchwork pavements that make his wheels sing in different keys.On sidewalk slabs troubled by...
by Nick Tabone | Dec 31, 2020 | Fiction
On Christmas evening they came down from the ship into a fresh fall of snow and walked on the narrow path between the high walls of the grain elevator and the ships side, treading carefully in the footprints of those who’d gone before to keep the snow from entering...
by Nick Tabone | Dec 25, 2020 | Poetry
from bridgesand the brinkof cliffs. Off of rocksand ship decks, piers and lidos,into oceans,frigid lakes and opalescent seas, over puddlesprivet hedges,brooks and felled trees. I have leapt down throatsand subway stairs,over...
by Nick Tabone | Dec 23, 2020 | Non-fiction
There are places your mother warned you about. You know. Past the train tracks on the outskirts of town. The Rouge River in Detroit is one of them. It’s here we unloaded our cargo of slag two nights ago. It is a pestilential...
by Nick Tabone | Dec 15, 2020 | Non-fiction, Prose
Days. Doldrum days. Underway. At anchor. Alongside. Slow loads and slow unloads. Day workers day work and watchkeepers keep watch. There are days when the belly of time swells with idle hours only for it to rip wide open like the crotch seam of a fat mans jeans...
by Nick Tabone | Dec 11, 2020 | Poetry
I’m a climber,I’m a clamberer.A jumperand a scrambler.I’m never late.I take the stairs two at a time. I’m a runnerI’m a skater.A brisk-walkera love or hater.I scissor-kick over fences.I climb ropes hand over hand. I’m a scaler,a high-tail-er,a mother...
by Nick Tabone | Dec 10, 2020 | Non-fiction, Poetry
I. A tanker, fresh from the Gulf, passes by under tug assist . It slips ghostlike through the sea smoke and flows of ice astern of us in the early morning, wearing a beard of ice three-foot-thick that trails all the way amidship. The...
by Nick Tabone | Dec 9, 2020 | Poetry
It might have been with Alistair and Billy.Behind the bushes on the hill at school.But I think it was with you, Chris. At the house on Whitney Avenue,with a menthol cigarette Melissa Hynes gave us.We smoked it in the garage with the chopped wood and the...
by Nick Tabone | Dec 3, 2020 | Non-fiction
Early December, and the salties are on the move, scooping up the last of their cargoes and heading east to the ocean before the St. Lawrence seaway closes for the winter. We are on the go too, wheat for Sorel, Quebec from Thunder...
by Nick Tabone | Nov 25, 2020 | Non-fiction
i. ‘I’m just going for a run,’ I say and hold my ID against the window of the small security booth at Superior Terminals on the outskirts of Thunder Bay. ‘No you’re not,’ says a voice from within. The sun is behind me and it is hard to see the owner of the voice...
by Nick Tabone | Nov 22, 2020 | Non-fiction
‘Want to walk to Bellwoods in a bit?’ I text my neighbour Jack,referring to the large park, that occupies a full city block, nearby. ‘Could do,’ he responds. I am keen to get out as tomorrow I return to work and...
by Nick Tabone | Nov 10, 2020 | Poetry, Uncategorized
Home on leave,for the fourth such time this year,and the sailor says to a friend that he sees the city,his life in fact,in time-lapse. He has arrivedto the fragrant swellof a leonine Indian Summer,and it is the seasons of course, that are the most obvious darlings of...
by Nick Tabone | Oct 29, 2020 | Non-fiction
It is unwise to make plans within 48 hours of an appointed crew change, lest you provoke the indignation of the crew change Gods and conjure the ‘crew change curse.’ I foolishly did just this and now trouble somewhere on the tracks between here, Sandusky, Ohio,...
by Nick Tabone | Oct 23, 2020 | Non-fiction
I’m woken two hours early by the 2nd mates knock at my cabin door, ‘We’re just passing Mission Point, we’ll need you for the locks,’ he says in what sounds, from my grimy fug of sleep, to be an obscenely cheerful voice. I grunt an...
by Nick Tabone | Oct 16, 2020 | Non-fiction
It is a time of gales. As temperatures change, storm fronts form out west and barrel eastwards towards us on the Great Lakes, where they suck up moisture, fuel for their devastating engines. There are the large, slow moving Colorado lows, and the smaller,...
by Nick Tabone | Oct 11, 2020 | Non-fiction
The engine room is like North Korea, I have no idea what goes on in there, and if I visit, I’m afraid I won’t make it out. Many minutes of my life have been lost trying to navigate its Escher-like catwalks and stairs, searching for an engineer, a storage...
by Nick Tabone | Oct 1, 2020 | Non-fiction
There is a cement spit that juts out into the St. Marys River on the approach to the Soo Locks. These locks are what join Lake Huron to Lake Superior and make up the elevation differential so that large commercial vessels are...
by Nick Tabone | Sep 27, 2020 | Non-fiction
i. Drive Unlike our tardy counterparts whose recidivism provokes such frustration, it is the fate of the overly punctual to go, for the most part, unnoticed. Many of us early-arrivers will hone a specific set of skills, chief among...
by Nick Tabone | Sep 18, 2020 | Non-fiction
‘Sir Bear teach me. I am a customer of death coming and would give you a pot of honey and my house on the Western hills to know what you know.” From Upstream by Mary Oliver There was a spider named Bob who made his home in the centre window of our...
by Nick Tabone | Sep 11, 2020 | Non-fiction
See the youth. Alone he stands on a ship’s deck as dozens rush around him in concert with the stentorian bellowing from the far end of the boat. They seem then, as kids in a gymnasium,, in thrall to their coach’s whistle. It is an indiscernible medley of...
by Nick Tabone | Sep 6, 2020 | Poetry
for Stella, the enthusiastic collie It isn’t the morning sun’s daubings on the lake or the way it’s light glints powerful off a passing aluminum skiff and the ripple of its distant wake. It is not the rain’s soft percussionon the back of a billion...
by Nick Tabone | Sep 3, 2020 | Non-fiction
‘They’re at their most nutritious when they’re most mature’, says Jeff, the chef on board, of fruits and vegetables. I’m spooning frozen wild blueberries into a bowl of oatmeal, and he continues to explain that...
by Nick Tabone | Aug 23, 2020 | Non-fiction
The busiest train bridge in America is an unassuming iron swing bridge that spans the Maumee River in Toledo, Ohio, rather modestly called the NS South. At almost any time of day you’ll see a procession of freight trains trundling abacus like across it, heading east...
by Nick Tabone | Aug 16, 2020 | Non-fiction
At the end of a pier in Sandusky, Ohio the Norfolk and Southern Coal Company’s load rig perches on the seawall like a steam-punk gargoyle, regurgitating a steady torrent of carbonized rock from its gaping maw into the bellies of waiting freighters. It...
by Nick Tabone | Aug 12, 2020 | Non-fiction
Today, summer; sticky hot. Stepping from the ship’s ladder onto dry land and his first foot fall in over a month is onto ground soft with rain and goose shit. The grass is pillowy thick and were it not for the aforementioned doo-doo he would drop face...
by Nick Tabone | Aug 6, 2020 | Non-fiction
In 1988 my family moved to the island of Malta. In the late eighties and early nineties it was not the cosmopolitan place it is today, reeling as it was from years of near-socialist rule, corruption, and the usual chaos that post-colonial countries find...
by Nick Tabone | Jul 30, 2020 | Non-fiction
meander: 1. to proceed by or take a winding or indirect course. 2. to wander aimlessly; ramble It is my habit to relieve the watch no later than a quarter to the hour. This morning, I take the wheel from the 4-8 wheelsman on the last stretch of the...
by Nick Tabone | Jul 26, 2020 | Fiction
Some time ago I found myself in a spot of financial bother from which the esteemed halls of academia and the pittance afforded a newly appointed assistant professor could not raise me. I had been an avid sailor in my youth, and paid my way...
by Nick Tabone | Jul 23, 2020 | Poetry
There’s more thanone way to skin a cat, and he should know. He is the Butcher’s son.He grew up with the scent of rendered flesh housedpermanently inhis olfactory nerve.Slept to the soundof the cleaver strikingthe chopping block,downstairs on the charnel floor.Now he...
by Nick Tabone | Jul 21, 2020 | Non-fiction
Ext. Silo City – Buffalo, New York – Evening We open to a large bulk carrier, the M.V M_________ unloading wheat into a grain silo deep in the Buffalo River. Across the way on the opposite bank are more silos, these ones are...
by Nick Tabone | Jul 15, 2020 | Non-fiction
for Catherine and Jack In my last hours ashore, before returning to sea, a fug of ashen gloom envelopes me and every action is invested with unnecessary import simply because the adjective ‘last’ can be attached to it. There is my...
by Nick Tabone | Jul 7, 2020 | Fiction
They gathered on the quarter deck at the change of watch. The wind had come down for the first time in weeks and above them the vast rigging hemmed and hawed as if in a state of quandary. Two days ago they’d lost Jackson as he went aloft to...
by Nick Tabone | Jul 3, 2020 | Fiction, Non-fiction
A late frost had left a thin carapace of ice on the deck, and the gathered crew trod carefully on the slippery steel in the chill of an April morning. We drank our teas and coffees in the half-light and some smoked cigarettes as we waited for the tugboat...
by Nick Tabone | Jun 30, 2020 | Non-fiction
‘People steer the same section all the time in daylight and in good visibility,’ the captain tells the third mate who is learning how to pilot this stretch of the river. We are in dense fog, down bound on the St. Clair River. ‘The mistake they...
by Nick Tabone | Jun 21, 2020 | Fiction
In the late afternoon they went ashore to gather wood. He nosed the zodiac up onto the bank and when they heard the familiar scrape of sand and gravel beneath its hull the others jumped ashore. ‘There’s nothing to tie the painter...
by Nick Tabone | Jun 18, 2020 | Poetry
Toledo, Ohio He promises not one more poem about birds.No more over-wrought high sentence or hyper-bolic phrase describing their aspect or their flight. No anthropomorphisms or verbs like swoop, soar, wheel, dive, glide, or hover....
by Nick Tabone | Jun 17, 2020 | Poetry
The winter riv-er is a white page and Coyote has made a kill out on the ice. See the violent slash of red that inks the young doe‘s final progress. Watch Coyote’s haunches strain and flex and fur-row as he tears viscera from it’s skeletal housing, looking from here...
by Nick Tabone | Jun 16, 2020 | Non-fiction
Act 1-The Load After the rigors and tight turnaround times of the stone and ore trade, a grain run is almost like a holiday. Thunder Bay, Ontario to Sorel, Quebec. Just shy of five days dock to dock, with no stops, barring locks,in between. JRI...
by Nick Tabone | Jun 13, 2020 | Non-fiction
The Thing About Rope – Thunder Bay, Ontario-Sorel, Quebec Any tallship sailor worth their salt will have an opinion on rope, and doubtless a preference. Some go for the traditional fibres, hemp and manilla. Others, the more practical synthetics, which are often...
by Nick Tabone | Apr 13, 2020 | Non-fiction
A View from The Lake at Sunrise (Windsor, Ontario to Green Bay, Wisconsin) Faced with worsening weather, old sailing ships’ crews would reduce canvas aloft and set about securing the decks above and below, hurriedly lashing any loose items before the gathering storm,...
by Nick Tabone | Apr 4, 2020 | Non-fiction
Green Bay, Wisconsin to Duluth, Minnesota Tom Weafer was an old colleague of my dad’s. They worked for the Ontario government. Both were new to the country. Tom was from Ireland. He was a little older and had been in Canada a bit longer and my father looked up to him....
by Nick Tabone | Mar 28, 2020 | Non-fiction, Prose
The Downtown Skateboarder’s Journal of a Plague Day Baldwin Street, east of Spadina, is a three-block paradise of unblemished asphalt that on any given day, in favourable weather conditions, is a joy to skateboard down. Today, with so little traffic, I choose to...
by Nick Tabone | Mar 13, 2020 | Poetry
Outsidein the loosening freeze,the last stubborn snows meltand the soil oozeslike wet sponge underfoot,as spring’s first smells emerge,on the breeze,whispers of rotten leafand sodden grassand months’ old dog turdsbeing givena proud second run. It’s quiet herelike the...
by Nick Tabone | Mar 12, 2020 | Poetry, Uncategorized
for Natas Kaupas I am old now, and my bones crack like burning woodwhen I sit or stand.But shit, I can recalla time when I was youngand God was a blondeCalifornian and half the age of what I am now.How me and my friendsstudied those...
by Nick Tabone | Feb 28, 2020 | Non-fiction
Oxfordshire, UK-10km’s “10. I am grateful always to have had courage, gaiety and a light heart.” Barreling full-tilt along black country roads with hi-beams on is not without its risks though most of this seems to have been absorbed by the local badger population of...
by Nick Tabone | Feb 14, 2020 | Fiction, Non-fiction
(Partly truth, partly fiction) “Occupying a magnificent chosen position in this lovely old-world village in the Amber Valley. Weathered stone facing South West within a beautiful landscaped garden and having superb views over most lovely unspoilt country about mid-way...
by Nick Tabone | Feb 9, 2020 | Non-fiction
There is an exuberance that pervades the Talking Heads’ 1984 concert film ‘Stop Making Sense. Watching it there is no doubt that they were a great band but on a recent re-watch what struck me is how much everybody seems to be enjoying themselves, particularly Tina...
by Nick Tabone | Jan 31, 2020 | Non-fiction
Ghajn Tuffieha/Gnejna Hobbled by a bum knee and a six week moratorium on running, and increasingly unfulfilled by the paltry rehabilitative one minute walk/30 second run drills I’ve been prescribed – which for one used to chewing up at least 10km’s a day is the...
by Nick Tabone | Jan 17, 2020 | Non-fiction
His face was not his fortune. A small, snaggle-toothed creature with monstrous breath and lopsided bearing. He used to skulk around the film studios where I was working. Just out of range, staring sadly at people. One day I saw a construction worker throw a rock at...
by Nick Tabone | Jan 9, 2020 | Non-fiction
Sliema, Tax Biex-13km’s Once,I stood alone,atop the highest yard,in howling windswhile a wild oceanraged all about me. Of course it fell to me, as the most experienced of the deck crew, to scramble up the foremast and secure the t’gallant sail which had begun to...
by Nick Tabone | Jan 4, 2020 | Non-fiction
Sliema, Marsamxett, Valletta-13km’s It is impossible to write of Malta without acknowledging the light. Perhaps it is the limestone of which this island is made, or the blue sea that surrounds this small rocky outcrop in the middle of the Mediterranean, that makes it...
by Nick Tabone | Dec 4, 2019 | Non-fiction
Lake Superior The winter lake has a hundred moods, and many ways in which to express them. Today, when I arrive for watch at 1600, she seems calm, her surface serene and grey. The wind is blowing a steady ten knots, fair conditions for this time of year. We’re taking...
by Nick Tabone | Dec 4, 2019 | Non-fiction
Upbound Lake Huron Out here I spend a lot of time watching the kettle boil. This is to say, that for all the days where we work like the devil for our pay, there are hours where the pace slackens and we can catch our breath. And though, as the old saying about the...
by Nick Tabone | Nov 20, 2019 | Non-fiction
Sault Ste. Marie, ‘The Soo’, 10km’s Essar Steel sits on a scorched patch of earth beside the St. Marys River, midway between Lakes Superior and Huron. The ground here is thick with tarry mud and pond-sized patches of oily water that reflect the sky silver and glisten...
by Nick Tabone | Nov 12, 2019 | Non-fiction
Drummond Island, Michigan, 11km’s In the past few days, as though a switch has been flicked, winter has come to these upper Great Lakes. Overnight the complexion of the sea seemed to change, its pallor darkening by several shades to an ominous inky blue and the sky...
by Nick Tabone | Nov 12, 2019 | Uncategorized
Drummond Island, Michigan, 11km’s In the past few days, as though a switch has been flicked, winter has come to these upper Great Lakes. Overnight the complexion of the sea seemed to change, its pallor darkening by several shades to an ominous inky blue and the sky...
by Nick Tabone | Nov 12, 2019 | Poetry
The Runners Rebuke of the Waterfowl Goose! Your disdain forme is noted. On my birth-day no less. Fuck you. The Unwanted Epiphany It occurs to methat I am now older thanElvis was. Oh shit.
by Nick Tabone | Nov 4, 2019 | Non-fiction
Upbound, Lake Huron It is not a truth universally acknowledged that the greatest smell in the world is the pad of a Labrador’s paw, but it should be. I learned of this when I was young, on the cold winter mornings when my sister and I would tramp sleepily down the...
by Nick Tabone | Oct 29, 2019 | Non-fiction
Mount Saviour Monastery, Pine City, New York, 11km’s My father was born to the crash and clamor of airborne ordnance as the Luftwaffe commenced what remains one of the largest bombing campaigns in history on his small island. Perhaps coming into this world to such...
by Nick Tabone | Oct 24, 2019 | Non-fiction
Buck Mountain, New York, 9km’s I am driving with my father along a highway in upstate New York, to visit a Benedictine Monastery that he has been going to since 1980. This is a place of significance to him, a part of his history. I came here 15 years ago but was still...
by Nick Tabone | Oct 3, 2019 | Non-fiction
Quebec City, 15km’s “Habit is a great deadener” wrote Samuel Beckett, but there’s nothing like good landscape seen from a ship’s deck to shake a sailor out of the often-humdrum routine of shipboard life. Navigating down the St. Lawrence River in Autumn one is deluged...
by Nick Tabone | Sep 30, 2019 | Non-fiction
Fort William Native Reserve, Mount McKay-21.9km’s I must have taken a wrong turn. The mud underfoot is thickening and sucks greedily at my shoes and the undergrowth is closing in claustrophobically, with errant branches encroaching on my airspace and worrying my face...
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