It is harvest time in the teeming sea
And the surges labor tirelessly
Like toil bent reapers with sickles of foam
They garner the harvest and carry it home,
Till the beaches throb to the rhythmic beat
As they strew it in windrows at our feet.
Slender strands like a whip lash, tear
At the cowering sands - ’tis the Dead-Man’s Hair
And the rockweed bulges with bulbous lumps
All yellow and brown, with the jagged stumps
Of kelp stalks wrenched by the undertow
From sunken glens where the sea things grow.
Eel grass rolled by the waves at play
In fresh cut swaths like the new mown hay;
Lettuce that glints with a fragile sheen:
And Irish moss with its mottled green
Moored to the decaying piling
Of a ruined wharf, and whiling
Endless hours away in dreams of days gone by,
Lies a battered hulk, dismasted,
Broken backed and tempest blasted,
Like a dolphin fast aground and left to die.
Deck awash and planking slanted
Like a broken lily planted
In the mud, where every tide the eddies swirl,
Years have gone since last it floated
And the sea growths all unnoted,
Underneath its rotting timbers twine and curl.
Often when my footsteps tended
To that lonely shore that ended
All its voyagings there sounded in my ear,
What the shrilling sea birds uttered
Oh, where are the rest of my shipmates,
And why am I not at sea,
And what is this lonely valley
Where no one is but me?
Have they sailed away without me?
Will they ever again return?
I never thought when he was dead
A sailor’s heart would yearn.
Oh, how did I die? In battle?
Or how did I die? Asleep?
Were there any who laughed when they heard it?
Were any too stunned to weep?
But who dressed me up so neatly?
Who brushed and combed my hair?
Some fellow just doing his duty
Or someone who tried to care?
How often had the sun been red
The sky as deep a blue
Behind long, tired stretched-out clouds
When I was then with you.
How often had the evening sea
Which you so much admired
With archipelagos of foam
Been bright and ruby-fired.
Oh, all these things tonight are here
Upon a distant sea,
But I have found no other one
To stand and watch with me.
His ship is on the ocean
But the sailor lad’s ashore,
And deeply, deeply sleeping,
He’ll waken nevermore.
We buried him atop the hill
That overlooks the bay,
And one there was who walked from there
With slower steps away.
And one there is on watch at night
Who wears the strangest smile,
Because he sees a specter lad
And talks with him awhile.
Across the world he comes to me,
And far horizons dim,
And I await the day when I,
Instead, shall go to him.
A little while ago that sky was gold,
And green that hill,
And blue the white-capped sea,
And I stood watching through these vines a ship
That moved, hull down, beyond,
Beneath the point.
I wonder now, before the stars are out
And long black clouds have filled the sunset sky,
Will I remember this at midnight hour:
How much I longed to be aboard that ship!
I was looking through a recipe book
trying to find out how to cook a fish.
I started to wonder...
what if a fish was looking up
a good recipe
on how to cook a man.
I left the kitchen
and my feet brought me to the sea.
I splashed into the world of fishes
and forgot to eat; I felt no hunger at all.
I drift beneath a grammar of sharply etched shapes
and clear contrasts. Eddies dance as if to mock
my dumb back as I pass under a cove’s calm surface.
Sometimes a seabird’s shriek thuds through thick
water. I feel forever dark weight of water.
It’s as present to me as my own body as I push
through it with ridiculous flippers. One day I will
just stop and drop to ancient mud;
clouds of mud will mushroom out about me, swirl,
disappear on currents. I'll roll on one side
with one eye buried in muck and one still staring
at black water mottled with insinuations of light.
A sound will grow in me, rise out of my
mute years, build into a moaning like a sunken
ship’s crushed hull, then race into a scream smothered
While watching forests comb those wet bellies,
All grey and louring, of the heartless clouds,
I wondered how the heavy earth breathes
Thus more than dampened, more than drowned
In so much rain. The very snails could gasp,
Nudging toward such daylight as they might,
Grudged them by the endless drops, dropping.
Fear for my crops, standing in chill pools
Or bent, prostrated, shambled, lying left and
Right, I feel, yet not enough to go and see.
There are tree branches, if I go, ready to pull
Hair, poke eyes, and shower me to my skin,
Every direction, along each path and bed.
Running streamlets ease a darkening land
All river-bound, discovering the slightest slope,
Inland being anathema to them,
Whiteness enough off that coast to last a summer,
with chunks sized to drift among swells
like lost boats rising bottoms up to glimmer,
then dropping from a coastal watcher's view
halfway from here to wherever it is sky
comes down to touch water, blue on blue,
or even larger continents of white
shot through with green, shouldering breakers
with unhurried calm, things for night
to break on, or even day. You and I,
not having seen such before, go out
to frame each other with one in a camera's eye
and watch a schooner nosing among bays
scalloped along fringes of the beast.
The little ship goes near, but turns away
over and over to run, a cur who knows how strong
A woman appears on deck.
In her shy look the sailors
Inhale the perfume of swamp roots
And certain dark streets of Marseilles.
She stands still in a shadow.
Voices of children rising from the sea,
Air bells and flowers. . . .
Or maybe she is thinking of a house,
One of those little streets in Paris
Where lovers twitter like canaries.
Or maybe it's a forest.
The leaves are hushed and still.
All this, and more, the sailors
Think of while she stands,
One hand lightly resting on the rail.
Farewell, my old pine forest!
She sighs. What shall I say?
For beauty seems to grow
In silence, when the heart is faint and slow.
Sing, sing . . . How shall I sing?
In silent eyes, where clouds and islands gaze,
The waves bring Eros in.
I think the rustling of her clothes
Is like the sea, and she
A wild white bird,
And love is like the sighing of the sand.