Early Morning Captiva

Calusa come again
messengers in white
secret mounds of shell
ghosts of moving tide

arms of broken sea
stars fall on blue crests
fragile sand bones in white
I watch the light

pink and pearl
of shell against my ear
my ear a mirror
of the sound  I hear

the waves turning night
over and over
searching for sound
on sound

blue herons and plovers
come and go now
without the moon
the sun is full

of wind on water
the breath is slow
this is the hour of the heart
the hour of returning

Marsh in Summer

I walk gently
on wood
and pond

my body
sways
like jagged
grass

red
winged
blackbirds
sway
on wood
posts

far away
sand
fences
fall into
blue nets
of sea

a line
of swallows
takes flight

~~~~~~~~

Karolyn Redoute received an MFA from Indiana University. She enjoys blue water, in Michigan, her home state, and in Minnesota, her adopted state, but loves the ocean best. Prayers of the Shaman, her new book, is forthcoming from Plain View Press.

It should be obvious

what happened on the beach
where moonlight called to us
by way of sea-foam the color of oysters—

where rounded sea-rocks bathed, sea-oats blew,
where sand was sculpted by and over time—

where his right hand with its hungry palm
settled itself on my left shoulder, even before
we drank wine the color of juniper berries.

*********First published in Redheaded Stepchild (Fall, 2009)
*********Nominated for the Best of the Net Award

~~~~~~~~

Helen Losse’s first book, Better With Friends, was published by Rank Stranger Press in 2009. She is the author of two chapbooks, Gathering the Broken Pieces and Paper Snowflakes.  Her recent poetry publications and acceptances include The Wild Goose Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Iodine Poetry Review, Blue Fifth Review, Referential Magazine, Hobble Creek Review and Literary Trails of the North Carolina Piedmont. Her poem, “Four Snapshots of the Sea-Going Boats” won first place for poetry, 2009 Adult Writing Contest of the Davidson County (NC) Writer’s Guild. She is the Poetry Editor for The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.

Awakening

********for Sir Jaimes

I see you as a tall white tower,
rounded like a lighthouse, plastered,
a castle of a humble people
by the sea, its windows, all of them,
and they are many, flung open—
arms welcoming the sun.
There should be cliffs nearby.
There should be breeze soon and tides.
But for now, it can just rejoice
in being bright,
in being bathed with light.

The dove will find its way inside,
wings echoing through a shell
that’s clean: the sound
of unending solace
at night, the whisper of a dream
found each morning
on the beach, a boyish surprise.
And these things will abide.

May the Sea Take Back

May the sea take back
what the sea has brought,
the tentacled arms,
the slippery flesh,
the shingle-scales
and fierce, contorted heads,
each row of claw-shaped teeth
and the impressive darkness
trapped beneath.

May the sea take back
what the sea has brought.
Don’t even leave them beached
so near where I lie
regaining my strength
by swallowing sky.
They might learn to walk
before they would die
or whip up a sandstorm
to confuse the eyes.

May the sea take back
what the sea has brought.
I’ve swum so far with these
fastened to my side—
all my shaking off
as though for naught.
So wring them
until, groping, they cannot grope,
until their bloated bodies
no longer dive or breach
but float.

~~~~~~~~

Deborah J. Shore has won first place in two poetry competitions at The Alsop Review and has several other poems included in their print anthology.  She has poems forthcoming in Radix, Anglican Theological Review, Christianity and Literature, and Relief Journal and has older poems out at Avatar Review, Samsara Quarterly, and others. She is working on some prose manuscripts and is starting to formulate two manuscripts out of her poetry under revision: Counting my Days which will look at significant dates on the Judeo-Christian calendar and A Gate Called Beautiful which has a broader aim.

Salmon River Estuary

Drifting close to shore, we enter the shadow
of Cascade Head.  Our kayak jitters in an eddy
as we dip and lift the double-bladed paddles
to keep ourselves steady.  Lit by morning sun,
current and rising tide collide before our eyes
in swirls of foam where the river becomes
the sea.  Surf seethes across a crescent of sand.
Gone now the bald eagle’s scream as it leaves
a treetop aerie, the kingfisher’s woody rattle,
gulls’ cackle, wind’s hiss through mossy brush.
Light flashing through sea mist forges a shaft
of color that arcs a moment toward the horizon
and is gone.  Without speaking, moving together,
we power ourselves out of the calmer dark
and stroke hard for the water’s bright center
where the spring tide will carry us back upriver.

Winter on the Island

In late December nothing could keep us
from walking the shoreline to land’s end.
Storm by storm we saw high summer sands
flattening until the old year died in a surge
of surf.  By then swash stained the beach
gray as the place where sky and rising sea
came together. This was the turning world
as far as we knew it, children learning faith
in longshore drift, the quiet work of currents
beneath all that dark churn and spume.

~~~~~~~~

Floyd Skloot has published fifteen books, most recently the memoir The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer’s Life (U. of Nebraska Press, 2008), named one of the top ten northwest books of 2008 by the Oregonian, and The Snow’s Music (LSU Press, 2008), his sixth collection of new poems. His Selected Poems: 1970-2005 (Tupelo Press, 2008) won a Pacific NW Book Award and ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year silver award. Skloot has received three Pushcart Prizes, won a PEN USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction (for his 2003 memoir In the Shadow of Memory), and Oregon Book Awards in both poetry and creative nonfiction.  He was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award in Nonfiction and the PEN Award for the Art of the Essay. His work has twice been included in the annual Best American Essays, Best American Science Writing, and Best Spiritual Writing anthologies, and once in the Best Food Writing and the Best of the Best American Science Writing. He lives in Portland with his wife, Beverly Hallberg, a painter whose work graces the covers of four of his books.

In a Sheltered Cove

Wind arrows all
Point somewhere else

A small cove
Shaped like a harp
With sea horizon its
Deepest string attached

Further out great drama—
Black clouds furred with rain
Deepsea furrows
Veined with spindrift

The world’s wondrous violence
Spares this place
With flat water
Silent sand

Seabirds at rest

Even when they fly
They trace with their flight
quiet language
Across dark vellum

–Devil’s Elbow, OR

Salmon ladder

Nothing more than
Redwood logs   joined
By steel   by threading

A ladder for fish to climb

Ancient course they must pass—
—Leaping into cold
Snapping air
To land ten feet further
Along a sacred way

Silver route for life to move
Powerfully back into channels
Where riffles sing beneath ferns

Fog spirits in ravines
Bless this place

Where salmon dance
Delicate spasms of apricot fire
Up their stairway

To birth waters
Full of the milk of the sky

–Nehalem, OR


Salmon plant

Dull twilight at sea
Full of the ichor
Of frozen gods

Ancient star Spica
Cobalt and emerald flash

Full moon gapes through a fog
Shaped like the waterway it follows

Swimming silver knives
Spumes of foil
Flaring magnesium twists

———-Coho salmon upstream

Workers bent to their task-
———-Jumpstarting
——————–A river

– Bandon, OR

~~~~~~~~

Daniel Williams resides in the Yosemite region of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Northern California.  He has an M.A. in English Literature from San Jose State University and has taught at Foothill College, Columbia College, and Metro State in Denver.  Daniel has read for Poets’ West readings at the Frye Art Museum, Wednesdays at KSER radio, Barnes and Nobles, and Epilogue Books in Seattle, and at Cody’s Books, Berkeley.  He’s also listed in Poets & Writers and is available for readings at Bookthatpoet.com