October 28: Ferry ride

It’s amazing—

the human capacity

for staring out to sea.

September 29: Wave action

Waves crashing

the length of the harbor.

Late night conversation.

January 16: Calm seas

Sunrise, MLK Day--

waves off the point

practicing non-violence.

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September 22: The sea's a metronome

Despite the chill

I keep my window open

so waves lull me to sleep.

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August 21: Sermons in stones

"And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds... sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it." --William Shakespeare, in As You Like It

Sea-stones tell their stories--

the main character is time,

waves drive the plot.

 

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August 15: Elizabeth Bishop Symposium

The North Haven (Island) Library hosted a symposium over the past two days celebrating Elizabeth Bishop, one of my favorite poets. I attended this morning's session, which entailed taking an early boat from Rockland and returning by ferry this afternoon, head full of thoughts about Bishop's life and poems, while across the water clouds piled up dramatically over the Camden Hills.

In honor of this event, I thought I'd give myself the exercise of starting off today's haiku with a line of Bishop's poem "North Haven":

Nature repeats herself--
waves rock the ferry,
storm-petrels weave among them.

August 3: Reid State Park

Wind from the west and waves,

yet I hear the young tern

and know what it wants.

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December 26: Plum Island

Where waves meet sand

instead of sandpipers

wind-skitter of dead leaves.

 

 

 

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May 16: On island

Robin's song, cries of gulls,

cold wind and crashing waves--

island twilight.

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January 17: Beaches

Spent our last full day in Florida soaking up the seaside sun and warmth with a second hike at Stump Pass State Park and a visit to the beach at Blind Pass State Park on Manasota Key. So much to love: shorebirds at surf's edge, diving pelicans, sea grapes, crying ospreys, dolphins passing by offshore, colorful shells tumbled by waves, a gopher tortoise thoughtfully chewing on a blade of grass, anoles rustling among dry palm fronds, and always the ancient rush and rhythm of the waves...

 

Sand slows my steps.

I breathe

in time with waves.

 

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March 18: Beach

I told someone recently that my preferred habitat is the beach. The combination of the expanse of sand encroached by the ever-shifting ebb and flow of waves, where land meets sea, makes for a dynamic place of constant change. At Clam Pass Beach in Naples, Florida today, I was in my element: terns, gulls, skimmers, and sandpipers flocked near our towels, shells piled up at the wave line, dolphins swam offshore through aquamarine waves, pelicans and frigatebirds soared overhead, sand scoured my bare feet, waves sang the rhythms of the deep, my nieces built sandcastles, and my husband was happily occupied fishing in a mangrove-lined inlet.

 

On the beach

even surrounded by people

I find my space.

 

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February 17: Gale

Winds loud as surf.
No wonder I dreamt
of flood tides.

October 30: Flood

Since childhood I've had recurring nightmares about water--rogue waves about to carry me under, storms creating waves so high they creep up over the bank and across the lawn to carry away my grandparents' house, roads or paths flooded and impassable so I'm stranded with water all around me... You'd think that since I'm a water sign, a Pisces, I'd have a better subconscious relationship with water. But no.

So when I was looking at photos this morning of the flooding and destruction caused by Sandy in New Jersey and New York--cars completely submerged on city streets, houses surrounded by waves, impossibly high waves crashing over sea walls onto shorefront houses, commuter tunnels filled to the top with water--it was like seeing my worst dreams come to life. The images produced such a visceral reaction in me, I had to stop looking. My heart goes out to those people for whom such images are not just bad dreams but reality. And as I listen to the rain fall--nothing torrential, no high winds--I am tremendously grateful to have had it so easy here on the Maine coast, and that all those I love are safe.

It all washes away
so easily.

 

September 29: Leaving the island

How will I sleep now
without the lulling rhythm
of the waves?

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August 6: Pelagic

Three birder friends and I had picked this day several months ago for a seabird trip from Vinalhaven with biologist John Drury in his boat Fluke. Who knew we'd have such luck? Today everything came together for the perfect pelagic outing: good people, clear skies, relatively calm seas, and lots of birds*.

There's something special about the birds you see when you're on the open ocean with no land in sight. Wilson's storm-petrels, small brown seabirds that dart among the waves like swallows, seemed to appear out of nowhere to flit past the boat and then disappear beyond the swells. Young gannets dropped from height, plummeting after fish head-first, straight down into the water like shining white arrows that always hit their target. Terns wheeled acrobatically on slender white wings, dipping into waves right alongside the boat for little fish to bring back to almost-fledged young. At one point we saw two jaegers in the distance and gave chase, but these big, gull-like birds that like to steal prey from other birds were quickly out of sight.

Sometimes we passed a lobster boat pulling traps, and each swell would half-hide the other boat from view. But these were long, smooth swells, no white-caps in sight, so not scary, just a little disorienting. It doesn't take long to get into the primal rhythm of the water, the rise and fall that every so often seems to come to life in the form of the dark fins of porpoises. A day like this makes me think owning a boat would be really cool, until I remind myself that days like this are truly rare.

Fog lifts. Swelling sea
carries us on its grey back.
We leave land behind.

* I would be remiss if I didn't somehow get in here that the real highlight of this pelagic trip was seeing a red-billed tropicbird on Seal Island, a life bird for me. This tropical vagrant is spending its sixth summer in Penobscot Bay, which it has apparently chosen as its home. John Drury, who knows the location of the bird's lair on the island, says he thinks it thinks it's a tern, but the terns don't want to have anything to do with it. This exotic summer visitor is, I fear, doomed to lead a lonely life, unless a fellow tropicbird of the opposite gender also happens to wander this far off course...

Tropicbird in Maine--
despite your lonely summers,
you keep coming back.

April 27: Waves

In a recent conversation with a friend about a surfing film festival he had attended, we both agreed that surfing movies were cool to watch because big waves are so fascinating. That's a simplification of the complex feelings many of us have for waves, which are truly energy made visible, manifestations of the action of wind upon the face of the waters. Growing up near the ocean, I have long loved watching waves.  My grandmother and I used to lie in bed and count to see if every seventh wave was the biggest. I would keep my bedroom window open in all seasons so that I could hear the crash of the waves upon the rocky shore, the rhythmic breath of the ocean. I paste a copy of Hokusai's 18th-century wood-block print "The Great Wave off Kanagawa"--an iconic image that has resonates deeply for me--on the cover of all my journals. Look at the loving detail with which he represents the wave's foam, the curling crest of the wave like a bunch of reaching claws or an opening mouth about to engulf the small boats below:

And therein lies my personal problem with waves. Fascination is the flip-side of fear. Ever since I was tumbled by a huge wave as a kid at Sand Beach in Acadia National Park, I have been afraid of waves. This fear has expressed itself all these years in my dreams. When I was a child, I would dream that the waves on my grandparents' beach were rising over the bank to carry away the house with me in it. In addition to that specific recurring dream, my subconscious shares with me on a regular basis many variations on the theme. In some dreams I'm swimming, and high-crested waves are carrying me away from shore or threatening to drown me. In others, I'm onshore and a wave sweeps over me. Last night I dreamt that I was watching some big rollers crash on a beach. The water was transformed into muscular blue fists--you could feel the power as they drew themselves up before pounding the shore. I was marveling from a distance at how amazing they were when suddenly a rogue wave lifted me up from behind. I had just enough time to think that I'd be lucky to survive its hurling me onto the beach and tumbling me around. Then I woke up. 

I guess it's a good thing I didn't go to the surfing movie fest, if just talking about waves gave me such a dream. Imagine what nightmarish images all those translucent curling wave shots, all those surfers tumbling into the foam, would have planted in my subconscious. 

Waves roll through my dreams,

curling around my childhood,

washing all away.