summer fish, winter fish

December 8th, 2007.
8am, GMT,
7pm, Eastern Summer time.

indigo sea

It is hot in my studio, storms roll by.
I am using indigo pigment to make pictures:
My hands and face are blue.
I think of flower buds and lighthouses and faraway headlands.


It may just be the indigo in my eyes,
But I feel very much like crying.

enmeshed

I had been thinking that things would be alright, when I ventured forth into the deep.
It rained in sheets, and the sea, dark green, was warm and silky, yet rose and tossed about.

I headed for the northern headland, below, kelp rose from dark places dimly lit.
All Bronze Whalers lay timid and quiet, hidden in even darker clefts, fearing the noise and commotion above.
In the shelter of the cliffs, the water shifted about, more restless than malign.

I thought I passed my love, sitting on a peak of water, feet trailing: I ran a finger along the sole of his foot, he smiled.
Fish bright, I spun into the open sea.

I had been mistaken, the sea was spiteful, and pulled me this way, cackling and shrieking with that familiar pitch: a warning not to take anything for granted. I knew then I was foolish.

Firmly, the water pulled, and when I made to look up to the horizon, dark waves blocked my view.
Oh, the water was soft and warm, but cruel, tried to pull me down, bend my bones, thrust me sideways. Always the sandy bed shifting one way, and then another, shadows in the dim.
Entangled and trapped, nevertheless,
like all good fish, I continued, and all the way, was pulled and tossed. It is dark, in the open sea, the surface spined with silver where the rain drives in, the fresh rain lying on the surface like a blanket.


At the edge I find
the longest piece of seaweed in all the world, torn from the rock garden by the whim of the water. I drag it up, and make a wreath on the sand. An offering.

I know you're there, I call, silently. You are with me always. I will never give up

I walk up the wet sand, and away.
The ocean fills my every space.