Amy Lowell Prize Co-Winner, selected by Dzvinia Orlowsky
Poem for Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg and the Sea Serpent of Plymouth Bay
June 14, 1857. Henry David Thoreau’s Journal
“Watson tells me that he learns from pretty good authority that Webster once saw the sea-serpent. It seems it was first seen, in the bay between Manomet and Plymouth Beach, by a perfectly reliable witness (many years ago)… One morning he saw this monster, with a head somewhat like a horse’s raise six feet above the water, and his body the size of a cask trailing behind. He was careering over the bay, chasing the mackerel, which ran ashore in their fright and were washed up and died in great numbers…”
Bob Dylan took photos for the cover of the album Desire in Pilgrim Park in 1976, when he was in Plymouth with Allen Ginsberg to kick off his Rolling Thunder Revue Tour at Memorial Hall.
Me and Ginsberg saw the sea serpent of Plymouth Bay
As we stumbled out a watering hole on Water Street:
A long, black, oily beast swimming away
While the country’s greatest poet helped me stay on my feet.
A fellow traveler, Ginsberg, his job on the tour
Was not as of yet completely defined.
When I got in trouble, he kept me from more;
He was always my sight when the night made me blind.
I’m getting distracted, the point is the beast
Wrapped itself round the Mayflower’s hull
It was 290 feet long at the least
With a horse’s head, body half python, half whale.
And it squeezed on that beautiful ship ‘til the wood
Was groaning and shaking and boy, we were shocked.
We knew that it wasn’t safe to stay where we stood
So Ginsberg and me took off toward Plymouth Rock.
We climbed up the pillars and got on the roof
The sea serpent started to gargle in fury,
And sincerely I don’t want to come off aloof
But from this point on details get kind of blurry.
Ginsberg got talking about this historic old town.
Pilgrims, Wampanoags, the lobster, the height
Of Forefather’s Monument. Wait, the renowned
Dick Gregory just moved here? This place is all right!
The serpent kept squeezing, ’twas getting obscene.
We climbed down the pillars to see what we could do.
In Pilgrim Park I surveyed the scene—
We’d come back tomorrow and take pictures too!
We got to the State Pier and there was the serpent
Dripping with water and drooling black ooze.
By then I was wondering just how much I’d spent
At the fisherman’s saloon drinking all that cheap juice.
No matter. The serpent just gargled and squeezed
Until we believed the old Mayflower would crack.
So I gave it a kick in the gills and said please
Man get out of here, and like, don’t ever come back!
Then Ginsberg stepped up jingling his finger cymbals
And chanted: Toothy darkness! Sick serpent of Moloch!
Beast swum from the deepest of misery’s riddles!
Be gone, by the power of the one Plymouth Rock!
The serpent let go and like a black blob of blubber
Melted into the waves as it sank out of sight.
And then me and Ginsberg, two cultured landlubbers,
Walked back to the tour bus to sleep off the fright.
So from that night to this one, nobody has seen it.
The sea serpent of Plymouth Bay disappeared.
I’ve told you the story and I really mean it,
This happened, I lived it, I know it sounds weird.
Tell me who doubts a man who is playing guitar?
I travel the country in search of a truth
That cannot be bought or caught in a jar:
These legends that make up America’s youth.
Stephan Delbos is the first Poet Laureate of Plymouth, Massachusetts. His poems, essays, plays and translations have been published and performed internationally. He is the author of the poetry chapbook In Memory of Fire (Cape Cod Poetry Review, 2016) and the poetry collections Light Reading (BlazeVOX, 2019) and Small Talk (Dos Madres, 2021).