Home's

 A squall has struck the sea afar off.
    You can feel it quiver
    Over the paper parasol
    With which she shields her face;

    In the drawn-together skirts of her robes,
    As she turns to meet it.

(Top photo from here. Bottom photo from here.) 

When over the flowery, sharp pasture’s
edge, unseen, the salt ocean

lifts its form—chicory and daisies
tied, released, seem hardly flowers alone

but color and the movement—or the shape
perhaps—of relentlessness, whereas

the sea is circled and sways
peacefully upon its plantlike stem 

Up, up, slender   

         As an eel’s

         Child, weaving   

Through water, our lonely   

Pipefish seeks out his dinner,

         Scanty at best; he blinks

         Cut-diamond eyes—snap—he   

         Grabs morsels so small

Only a lens pinpoints them,

But he ranges all over

         That plastic preserve—dorsal   

         Fin tremulous—snap—and   

         Another çedilla

Of brine shrimp’s gone ...

We talk on of poetry, of love,

         Of grammar; he looks   

         At a living comma—   

         Snap—sizzling about

In his two-gallon Caribbean

And grazes on umlauts for breakfast.

         His pug nosed, yellow

         Mate, aproned in gloom,   

         Fed rarely, slumped,

Went deadwhite, as we argued on;   

That rudder fin, round as a

         Pizza cutter, at the

         End of his two inch

         Fluent stick self, lets his eyes

Pilot his mouth—snap ...

Does his kind remember? Can our kind forget?

It is but a few days ago that I rejoiced at having got without the Reef, but that joy was nothing when Compared to what I now felt at being safe at Anchor within it, such is the Visissitudes attending this kind of Service & must always attend an unknown Navigation where one steers wholy in the dark without any manner of Guide whatever.

In reality they are far more happier than we Europeans; being wholy unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary conveniencies so much sought after in Europe.

You're sitting here with us, but you're also out walking
in a field at dawn. You are yourself
the animal we hunt when you come with us on the hunt.
You're in your body like a plant is solid in the ground,
yet you're wind. You're the diver's clothes
lying empty on the beach. You're the fish.

In the ocean are many bright strands
and many dark strands like veins that are seen
when a wing is lifted up.
Your hidden self is blood in those, those veins
that are lute strings that make ocean music,
not the sad edge of the surf, but the sound of no shore.

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge

The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath

An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,

Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,

The calyx of death’s bounty giving back

A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,

The portent wound in corridors of shells.

Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,

Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,

Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;

And silent answers crept across the stars.

Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive

No farther tides ... High in the azure steeps

Monody shall not wake the mariner.

This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

I tell you that I see her still

At the dark entrance of the hall.

One gas lamp burning near her shoulder   

Shone also from her other side   

Where hung the long inaccurate glass   

Whose pictures were as troubled water.   

An immense shadow had its hand   

Between us on the floor, and seemed   

To hump the knuckles nervously,   

A giant crab readying to walk,   

Or a blanket moving in its sleep.

You will remember, with a smile   

Instructed by movies to reminisce,   

How strict her corsets must have been,   

How the huge arrangements of her hair   

Would certainly betray the least   

Impassionate displacement there.   

It was no rig for dallying,

And maybe only marriage could   

Derange that queenly scaffolding—

As when a great ship, coming home,   

Coasts in the harbor, dropping sail

And loosing all the tackle that had laced

Her in the long lanes ....

                                       I know

We need not draw this figure out.

But all that whalebone came from whales.   

And all the whales lived in the sea,   

In calm beneath the troubled glass,   

Until the needle drew their blood.

I see her standing in the hall,

Where the mirror’s lashed to blood and foam,   

And the black flukes of agony

Beat at the air till the light blows out.

Far, far out lie the white sails all at rest;

Like spectral arms they seem to touch and cling

Unto the wide horizon. Not a wing

Of truant bird glides down the purpling west;

No breeze dares to intrude, e’en on a quest

To fan a lover’s brow; the waves to sing

Have quite forgotten till the deep shall fling

A bow across its vibrant chords. Then, lest

One moment of the sea’s repose we lose,

Nor furnish Fancy with a thousand themes

Of unimagined sweetness, let us gaze

On this serenity, for as we muse,

Lo! all is restless motion: life’s best dreams

Give changing moods to even halcyon days.

Deep Spin. Eric Zener.

It came to me that a river is flowing
somewhere inside the ocean, a crystal
muscle of water flexing under
the salt; and in it, trapped for centuries,
fish from a purer stream are living
in their old ways, fresh and strong.

It came to me as I was breathing,
one in a crowd of people waiting
inside a convention listening to speeches
that whispered something hidden in language
to save us. I felt that Amazon tug
for a minute, before the salt came back.

Eastern Sea, 100 fathoms,   

green sand, pebbles,   

broken shells.

Off Suno Saki, 60 fathoms,   

gray sand, pebbles,   

bubbles rising.

Plasma-bearer   

and slow-

motion benthos!

The fishery vessel Ion

drops anchor here

                           collecting   

plankton smears and fauna.

Plasma-bearer, visible

sea purge,

                sponge and kelpleaf.   

Halicystus the Sea Bottle

resembles emeralds   

and is the largest   

cell in the world.

Young sea horse   

Hippocampus twenty   

minutes old,

nobody has ever   

seen this marine   

freak blink.

It radiates on   

terminal vertebra   

a comb of twenty

upright spines   

and curls   

its rocky tail.

Saltflush lobster   

bull encrusted swims

backwards from the rock.

If you should look for this place after a handful of lifetimes:

Perhaps of my planted forest a few

May stand yet, dark-leaved Australians or the coast cypress, haggard

With storm-drift; but fire and the axe are devils.

Look for foundations of sea-worn granite, my fingers had the art

To make stone love stone, you will find some remnant.

But if you should look in your idleness after ten thousand years:

It is the granite knoll on the granite

And lava tongue in the midst of the bay, by the mouth of the Carmel

River-valley, these four will remain

In the change of names. You will know it by the wild sea-fragrance of wind

Though the ocean may have climbed or retired a little;

You will know it by the valley inland that our sun and our moon were born from

Before the poles changed; and Orion in December

Evenings was strung in the throat of the valley like a lamp-lighted bridge.

Come in the morning you will see white gulls

Weaving a dance over blue water, the wane of the moon

Their dance-companion, a ghost walking

By daylight, but wider and whiter than any bird in the world.

My ghost you needn’t look for; it is probably

Here, but a dark one, deep in the granite, not dancing on wind

With the mad wings and the day moon.

Sea-ward, white gleaming thro' the busy scud

With arching Wings, the sea-mew o'er my head

Posts on, as bent on speed, now passaging

Edges the stiffer Breeze, now, yielding, drifts,

Now floats upon the air, and sends from far

A wildly-wailing Note.

THE SEA is large.
The sea hold on a leg of land in the Chesapeake hugs an early sunset and a last morning star over the oyster beds and the late clam boats of lonely men.
Five white houses on a half-mile strip of land … five white dice rolled from a tube.

Not so long ago … the sea was large…
And to-day the sea has lost nothing … it keeps all.

I am a loon about the sea.
I make so many sea songs, I cry so many sea cries, I forget so many sea songs and sea cries.

I am a loon about the sea.
So are five men I had a fish fry with once in a tar-paper shack trembling in a sand storm.

The sea knows more about them than they know themselves.
They know only how the sea hugs and will not let go.

The sea is large.
The sea must know more than any of us.