Broadly, the topics that interest me are water, wellness and wildlife -- with a healthy dose of wonder in the mix.
Specifically, I'm interested in learning about how others are creating common knowledge and changing conversations - and the world - for good.
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These tears are yours to drink
If they fall to your breast
Or collect behind my ears.
Tonight I heard Neruda’s voice
For the first time.
He sang Body of a Woman
And I’m certain of yours he wrote.
Ah, I know the infinite ache
That thirst and desire
And even the vengeance.
So, yes, drink greedily.
Take in all of my tears
For they are tears of love and lust
And they are shed for us.
My sternocleidomastoid met your labia
in the mandibular shade
And only the rapid sounds
of a closing tricuspid valve
Followed by one atrial contraction
One faster after another, after another
Fell through the cool air
To your tympanic membrane.
My hand smoothed across erector spinae
And upon the rise of your gluteus maximus
A familiar sense of wellness in the world
Followed the path to and from
Ilium, ischium and
pubis
And some joyous whispers
Became diaphragmatic sighs and thence
Heaving mass of torso and pelvis
Finding rhythmic synchrony
As dancers around the stage
Ecstatic moans were pronounced
Preceding collapse into muscular exhaustion
And rapturous sleep.
We were trying to stop the ocean.
You can’t stop the ocean.
She wanted to understand love.
You can’t stop the ocean.
They walked day and night.
You can’t stop the ocean.
He couldn’t sleep.
You can’t stop the ocean.
Their words burned through.
You can’t stop the ocean.
My feet, my hands, my shoulders.
You can’t stop the ocean.
It’s so very very late.
You can’t stop the ocean.
We were trying to stop the ocean.
You can’t stop the ocean.
Today a shell told me
That he loved a stone.
That he’d never loved
A stone before.
But that this stone
Had stolen his heart.
I didn’t know what to say.
So I remained silent.
I’ll bet in the secret culture of waves that they have a lot of names that start with "ts" and that they throw cotillions for the little ones to learn how to dance and dance and bow and dance some more- back and forth and back and forth.
Some waves end in ts and others begin and end in ts.
And none of them ever die (did you know that?).
Do you think the man in the elevator, going up
Or the passport checker standing on the post
Or even the highway patrol man
Noticed?
You all in brown and how it so perfectly
Complimented my blue sweater.
The play of our words overlapping
And never really cutting off
Like a song or a stage performance
Or some waves occasionally
bouncing in to each other around the pier
And rising higher, splashing.
Figuring the mysteries
Describing the sea
Dissolving all tensions
That may have lingered or
Settled into the fabric
Prior to our arrival.
Really what I’m saying is
Something rather arrogant,
Unbecoming even, and certainly
Inappropriate for such humble-ones
Like us.
It is this: together we are wise and beautiful.
Joshua Slocum may we one day speak
of the seas that you once sailed
and of the way they seemed
in those days of yours.
Days that surrounded the earth.
Did you feel yourself a conqueror
or a passenger?
Would you shout to the lonely depths
of the sea and the sky?
What reply did you expect to receive?
You,
pacing from bow to stern
knew every grain
every perfect connection had passed under your hand.
What confidence you had in Her!
And when she did betray
the punishment was borne by you.
From waters calm as ice
through waves that were avalanching mountains
across the infinite water forms
falling from all sides and above.
She carried you upon her decks
and into each youthful night
and the howl of longing solitude
and pitiless darkness.
When you heard the voice of the spray
the voice of the turtle
the voice of the sea
Did you recognize it
as your own?
~ Wallace J. Nichols
“As for myself, the wonderful sea charmed me from the first…I had already found that it was not good to be alone, and so I made companionship with what there was around me, sometimes with the universe and sometimes with my own insignificant self…”
~ Captain Joshua Slocum (1844 – 1909), America's best known sailor was the first man to circumnavigate or sail alone around the world on his ship Spray.
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