Sea Elegy
The first ocean I walked into was the Indian
warm, exquisite, blue/green, white beaches hot
under my feet. I’d been warned about menacing
sea creatures I’d only ever seen on The Undersea World
of Jacques Cousteau through lenses of safety
in front of others’ eyes. I heard there were sharks
and stone fish in the waters off of Lamu Island
where I loved being, where I saw the Southern Cross
one night, the tide just under my feet hanging
from a stone wall next to yours, the light barely
visible, the stars still bright. I could hear the water
as I walked through cobbled streets, no cars, the slap
of water against stone above sand that would be
bare again tomorrow. Hot winds leaned in on every yes,
let up when the sun rose. Soft leather sandals caressed
my feet as I walked wrapped in African cotton
from the village to the beach, stopping only when
the call to prayer wailed above and others fell
to their knees bowing to the east. I bowed to other
things. Wind on skin halts time but doesn’t stop it
for good. Tomorrow comes disheveled, stained,
with no apologies or all of them at once. The next
night in the only bar on the island where foreigners
congealed in search of something more fun than paradise,
another chance to resist or slip into the skin of another
animal will show itself and so on. This story doesn’t always
end well. The dhow taking us to a smaller island off shore
rocks on the green-blue warm bath of the sea. My friends
and I nap under trees, eat fish caught and prepared by the crew
who make their living this way. If they knew I wasn’t rich,
they’d not be so accommodating, but for an afternoon,
we are pampered and charged extra for a snorkeling lesson.
Forgetting the water may be shark infested, we swim, watch,
and swim until we return to Lamu, rested and fed, to walk
to the guest house that costs so little and provides clean
beds and showers. Years later, I’ll swim in the Mediterranean
where Aphrodite rose from the sea, where everything was
clear and blue. Just as before, every long look was a yes.
We understood how things would go. Who knew there would be
an expiration date stamped, illegible on our skins under
humid breezes wafting over us as we napped with windows
open, rocking in our own boat on calmer waters?
Orca Behavior
A brother and sister board
the bus, sit next to me
looking out of the window
—I’m pushed up against
the glass an elbow
in my side (I won’t
cry) their faces
framed in hunter
green the interior white
bright yellow the outside—
they sit like friends
who know me
laughing clown smiles
under bright blue eyes—
these days I listen
to David Attenborough
narrate orca behavior
the older female tossing
a seal into the air showing
her younger brother
how it’s done. They have to
eat, so I forgive them.
On Black Friday I think about the Poetic Line
Thanksgiving’s come
and gone and the blue whale
is the largest animal
on the planet—I can’t fathom
the immensity of flesh,
the krill it takes to fill
such a body that seems bound
to be empty for most
of the time it takes: breathe
out, then in, then dive
deeper into a vastness
down into one’s own home
that contains as it expands
that shrinks as it unfolds.
___________
Anne Graue (she/her), the author of Full and Plum-Colored Velvet, (Woodley Press) and Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press), has work in numerous journals and anthologies, online and in print. She is a poetry editor for The Westchester Review and for The Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry.