Boat Across the River
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Jekyll Island: Sunrise
One moon.
One sun.
Who drips red up
from water.
We are here
to honor
the sea.
I’m lucky
I don’t
live here
because this way
every day
is magic –
would I want
to think that this
is ordinary?
Sitting — Part 2
When I close my eyes,
first I see
a vibrating filament,
that with effort
I can cause to vibrate
in one place.
Vibrating and still
all at once.
Then I see a soft blanket,
smoothed of any wrinkles.
Like I’ve calmed the surface
of the sea.
Songs: Summer
waves of vibrating sound
crash on a leafy shore;
the insects hug close against
the gold-green trees of summer.
Or they could be thousands
of those rain tubes that you
turn upside down, singing
together in a round.
Tiny weathermen –
seems the louder
they hum, the hotter
it will be. The sound of eternity
breaking from the hot
Earth’s core, gets inside my head
and I hear their mantra
rattling inside everything:
in the air conditioner, the hair dryer
the engine of the car –
I hear them everywhere
they are or are not,
like the way I could see only
shark’s teeth when I closed my eyes,
after searching at the beach.
Heavenly Day
(That is a great song by Patti Griffin, by the way).
When I stepped out my front door at 6:45 this morning, it was raining. But it was so gorgeously warm and balmy. It was one of just a few times where I’ve stepped into darkness and felt totally comfortable. Usually, the dark scares me — that fear of the unseen. This morning, though, felt like the time I was in the Caribbean.
We stepped into the ocean and it was clear and blue and warm and the French couple we met — the guy — described it as the only time he’d been swimming in the ocean when he felt “no hesitation.” That’s how I felt this morning. I stepped into the warm wet darkness like I had stepped into the ocean: with no hesitation.
The tall tree in front of me opened thousands of its white flowers in my face and all the birds were singing and singing. Was it a bright and sunny afternoon? No. Was it beautiful? Yes.
Magnetic Poetry
When I lived in Utah, I had a friend who had magnetic poetry on her fridge. She always had the best poems stuck up there! She was a very neat and creative lady. When I moved back home after my year of service on the Reservation, J. and I got a box of the magnetic words for our fridge.
I was not nearly as prolific a fridge poet as I would have hoped, but I did have two little ones up for over a year. My daughter loves to pull the letters down and hide them in secret places around the house, so the magnetic poetry is on its last legs.
I have grown accustomed to reading the two poems every day, and however unimpressive they may be, they are words I am used to seeing and I don’t want to forget them after everything is back in a little box. The first is good for the season:
rhythm
kiss as always
the eternally
young
season:
spring.
And the second:
Father mother
baby daughter
heart ocean
surrounds.
Leaving the Island
I carried my daughter out onto our balcony to say goodbye to the ocean at 6:30 in the morning, before we got in the car for the longest drive in the world. It was still dark and the water was so quiet that I told her the ocean was still asleep.
She said, “And he takes his blankie and lays down his little ocean head on his little ocean pillow…”
Goodbye Cedar Key!
two year old sees an egret
White egret
standing in the water
looks like the crests of the waves
breaking around him.
The stormy air still thick
the egret flies away
my daughter says,
“Look at the bird
swimmin’ through
the air.”
Ceremony
Closing my eyes on the couch
in the house above the ocean,
I heard what I imagined was a woman
shaking out the laundry
to hang it on a line.
Wet clothes smacked the air;
I was dozing and dreaming
of this woman working.
I saw her behind closed eyelids:
hair pulled back but flying away
in the salty air, red
and yellow shirts, blue jeans
kept slapping, slapping
as she shook them out.
Finally getting up to see,
I leaned against the rail of my balcony.
Ten pelicans sat like fat footballs
on the calm water below;
they were taking turns
smacking their wings with purpose
against the ocean’s face.
One set off the next, and they beat
their wings on water.
Until eventually: they pumped their feet
against the soft runway,
and then they flew away.
Pelicans of Cedar Key
I just watched thirty pelicans fly by my open balcony doors!
I think the birds are starting to come back to the area to nest on the protected island nearby where people are not allowed and where there is a rookery. We boated out there a few days ago, but the birds had not arrived yet.
Seeing the group fly by just now was spectacular, though, and I can only imagine what the skies are like in a few weeks.
