The Big Lights It's something the philosophers might ponder, the way that big W swept the ocean at night between 1974 and 1976 from the roof of the Sea Spray Motor Inn; The lights were designed to bring in tourists driving south from Montreal (Ici en parle Francais) but what came instead was fish, Whole galleries of herring, drinking in the voltage 200 yards offshore and loving it, thousands of shivers they were, and no one knew about them until a Woods Hole oceanographer got lucky, stumbled into them in a wetsuit; He was alone that night, swimming beyond the breakwaters and his own suspended disbelief, Beyond Osiris and the holy rollers, the breakers phosphorescent in the foam, and two black years later, when the eight-story Sea Spray was destroyed and the lights went out forever, No one ever told the herring, who still wait out there like Giants fans, season after season, still believing Heathcliff will find Cathy in the moors, that Mr. Milligan (who now lives in the Canary Islands) Will finally take his too-long sideburns behind the hot water heater and throw that great power switch, Lighting everything clear to the Grand Banks this time, and eight years from now they'll still be out there, passing the legend down by word of mouth, still hung up on that magnificent absence, The sentimental little appetizers quite unseen by Canadian tourists and year-round residents, who at last report were fast asleep in their Hudson's Bay blankets, snoring beneath their horoscopes. |