Each wave you face is the same
and each one different.
The same in how it looks,
the whiteness of it’s crest,
the deep cerulean of its shadow.
Different in where it breaks on the body,
one just below the knee,
the next just above,
sending an unexpected joy
of cold shock through the groin
and into the brain,
causing you to lift your weight
onto the balls of your feet,
making it feel as if you are lighter.
There is a sudden intake of air to fill lungs
which have become suddenly larger.
Waves throw themselves onto the beach
in a last self-destructive act of desperation
or bash their white heads against
the limestone rocks at the foot of the break wall.
There is no poetry here,
only the pounding frustration of angry water
and biting wind beating themselves to death
against an unforgiving shore.
While we walked and talked along the breakwater I remember
how I asked you to slow down because I couldn’t keep up.
Aging legs and minds need a slower pace.
Walking and talking need time or they become
nothing more than exercise.
Silver songs turning sienna skies over dunes again,
winter beach morning dressed in khaki coveralls.
Lone fisherman arrives standing cold-raw-broken,
turning near silence where salmon await.
Evening in half-light, silver songs fade into umber beginnings,
traces of cinnabar on burnt umber sands.
Lone fisherman leaves bent cold-raw-broken,
turning near silence where salmon escaped.
Squalls of morning gone to history,
afternoon light on the dunes makes it seem
as though the sky has dropped the milky way.
A single sail white as fresh plies
the boundary between water and sky
westward bound until is disappears.
Waves pile on the shore as random thoughts
that foam and crest in patterns of fine lace
erased from memory in a moment’s time.
On a morning walk
along the Lake Michigan shore
I fell in love with a sea gull
and was enraptured of a dune.
Later that afternoon
I gave my heart to a willow,
my soul to a poplar tree bent by wind
and proposed marriage to a tortoise.
This kind of love comes
with no misinterpreted sighs
or clumsy telephone silences;
no retributions or apologies.
No need to find the right gift,
say the right thing,
remember every anniversary,
break each silence.
In my room I kept a book,
hard bound and very old.
Inside it each yellowed page
bore a title of its own:
The Spanish Bowline
Cat’s Paw
Carrick Bend
Dead Eye Cutter
Double Strop
Rolling Hitch
Sheepshank
Sheet Bend
Flemish Eye
Marling Spike Hitch
Turk’s Head
Clove Hitch
Spirit Sail Sheet
Studding Sail Halyard
All things I would need to know
before setting off on my first voyage.
Life needs a beach
that can be walked upon alone.
One with mysterious old pilings,
remnants of deserted fishing piers.
One of cold winds that moan without shame,
that sting the cheeks and water the eyes.
I know of such a beach
and it’s gift to me is poetry.
it’s a cold fog morning
that tumbles slowly up the avenue
from the idle stone-lined harbor
fishermen in their rain gear
take station on the break wall
hoping steelhead hunger
a north bound freighter
ghosts it’s way all ahead slow
a mile out hoping to evade
the gales of November
A lake with eyes of steel-gray
met wind as white as fresh.
They fell in love, married
and raised a family of dunes
that became my playmates.
When I myself was young
I thought of them as ancient
but somewhere, along the paths
they shared with me,
it was I who had grown old.
khaki dunes above the eastern shore
whitecaps on the face of the lake
the place of our act of parting
like gulls that travel a hundred miles
the sun echoes farewell feelings
you wave your hand and set off walking
I watch you grow slowly smaller
I invited Melville over for dinner.
To my great surprise he agreed to come.
But what would we talk about
over the asparagus tips, smoked ham and coffee?
Would we speak of the steel-gray sea
and the great leviathans of the deep?
The feel of hawser in calloused hand
or the panic of a Nantucket sleigh ride?
I think he might speak of the boredom
of being at sea for months without end
and the loneliness of endless nights
spent thinking alone in a foul smelling cabin.
When dinner’s over I’ll suggest a walk near the lake
perhaps along the breakwater to the lighthouse
and we’ll not talk at all the two of us
except to comment on sounds that sea birds make.
