One of Mack Sennett's bathing beauties...

not a bad gig. Love the outfit and the setting.

Is time travel possible?

The pain passes, but the beauty remains.
~Pierre-Auguste Renoir

rowboat at St. Ann’s Bay

It is the dip I translate, the sacred
scoop of blue, its heft and that moment
when, bright, it breaks the fluent skin
and finds the light. In that fine weight
and its release I hear the axis thrum,
intuit the birth of waxwing and lily.

And the sand, with its keen edges,
drinks the sun and returns radiance
in swells of shattered stone, fields of shell
and quartz. My knees are pillowed
in soft deconstruction, fingers dusted
with relics of kingdoms and conchs.

The tide favors me today, bears me jaunty
as I give my face to the sky. These oars
are abalone smooth, yellow as the orchids
near Garvey’s grave. My lips are salty,
hair wild as a nest. All day I ride
and parse the sea’s graceful, starry back.

watching the eclipse

I took a dive into the ring
of the corona last night
as the moon slid into darkness.
My shoes were seared,
my hair singed, my vision
altered by fire and wind.

On the surface it was cool,
peaceful. The air smelled
remarkably nostalgic,
an aura of almonds and talc.
Was there shelter here,
I wondered, a place for me?

I knew I could not stay.
Earth had a tether too strong,
all those hearts and flowers,
skies peppered with songbirds,
the goddamned sea!
Oh, I was homeward bound

before I landed on this pearl.
Still, tranquility was alluring,
its silence like a balm.
I took a rounded stone to weight
my pocket and slipped
between the shadows of the gods.

I have noticed how each day arrives, an often univited guest, with baggage, dilemas, challenges and joys in tow. We choose to face the day with dread or anticipation... with despair or hope. I opt for flinging open the door, going through those bags to look for treasure.

Or stepping out into the beautiful day beyond...

sailing at vespers

It is canvas now I raise for the wind
to cup and hold like a lover’s face.
For too long my sails were point de gaze,
a mesh so fine it snagged the stars

and caught the dark serifs of every word
intoned. I went nowhere and wondered
at my discontent. Now I feel the halyard
in my palm, imagine I stand in the belfry

and toll anew the hour of my own birth.
The sheets, they peal the wind’s low song
and this deck, it is my campanile. I wear the tulle
that I once flew, hold close the impediments

of that troubled sky. How else could I face
the windward nights? I am who I was,
uncertain hand upon the sanctus bell,
and who I am, a sailor aloft in the rigging.

I ring and come about, a steeplejack
atop the spar. I leave no opal wake,
but tender the chiming of the angelus,
sweet upon the swift, dark water.

I believe in love.

coming soon to a sky near you...

Well, won't this be cool?

We were born before the wind...

...before or perhaps of the wind, a droplet lifted and infused with sunlight. For an exhilerating moment we ride that wind until the sea enfolds us once again. In that windborne journey our story is told. As for me, it clarifies my yearning for the sea. Surely I was sprung from some wave struck against a wooden hull. In all my life no place has felt like home more than the deck of a ship, sailing the mystic, beautiful sea.

No, thank you.

This morning’s radiance is windborne, a cleansed pool
with its own indelicate clarity. I prefer rocky places
where kinder light gathers like a nest of clouds.
Precision has not been my ally. Sharp edges cut

and absolutes curl around my throat, verdant, thorned,
never blooming. In silence I find a soft unraveling,
a pillowed sigh and there the frayed hem crumbles
into the shadowed breath of petals crushed. My gown

is a an attar of silk-stitched stars and muted fire.
I wish the day curtained with whispered sun,
where I can bask in uncertainties, warm my hands
with their vague comfort. I shun the knife-blade tongue ,

its pearly hilt so tightly grasped, agleam like a dagger
of the gods. I leave the raindrop’s argent mirror
on the leaf for braver souls. I care not to see
the truth of every thing.