Radiant as Halos

Cap Sante Marina, Anacortes, WA
—Photos by Carol Louise Moon, Placerville, CA

NIGHT DIVE
—Samuel Green, First Poet Laureate, Washington, 2007-2009

Down here, no light but what we carry with us.
Everywhere we point our hands we scrawl
color: bulging eyes, spines, teeth or clinging tentacles.
At negative buoyancy, when heavy hands
seem to grasp & pull us down, we let them,

we don’t inflate our vests, but let the scrubbed cheeks
of rocks slide past in amniotic calm.
At sixty feet we douse our lights, cemented
by the weight of the dark, of water, the grip
of the sea’s absolute silence.  Our groping

hands brush the open mouths of anemones,
which shower us in particles of phosphor
radiant as halos.  As in meditation,
or in deepest prayer,
there is no knowing what we will see.

 First Nations Fishermen

AT THE POND’S EDGE

I come to her the way I come
to a pond’s edge in October dusk, so as
not to frighten the wood ducks,

my hands gentle, a drake drifting
across the pond’s surface
or the slow caress of mist at dawn,

hanging now on, now about the still water.
Dusk or dawn, a man can be gentle,
may be always and always gentle,

and still be a man, her slow teaching
over long years, the classroom her body,
nearly a quarter of a century now,

and no longer the body’s daily insistence,
the hard urging that caused me once to
fear my own desire.  We have slid

into middle age with a sweet understanding,
the pleasure of the long familiar,
a tenderness that still, no matter how gentle,

explodes into sudden wings on the water,
catching us both by surprise.

 Restored Schooner, "The Adventuress", Built 1913

Today’s LittleNip:

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.

—Vincent Van Gogh

 Boat Launch Hut

______________________

Many thanks to Carol Louise Moon for her photos today of Cap Sante Marina, where she and her partner, MyJohn, are spending some time this summer. Carol Louise wrote about Samuel Green, Washington State’s first Poet Laureate, and his poem (which neither Carol Louise nor I could find), “What the Fisherman Knows”. For more about Samuel Green, go to

•••www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/samuel-green
•••www.seattlepi.com/local/article/A-life-dedicated-to-the-art-of-poetry-1278592.php
•••vimeo.com/68195546

To hear him read:
•••www.kuow.org/post/view-here-perspective-poet-sam-green •••www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAI8tf6S1_0

For more about Cap Sante Marina, go to www.portofanacortes.com/.

—Medusa

 "A harbor seal that climbed up on the dock 

right across from our slip"

—Photo by Carol Louise Moon
Celebrate Poetry—and vacations!

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