The Skinny Island Post

We found the Feral Poet in a somewhat serious and reflective mood this week.  To the point, we cite this:

Guitar Against Wall

Against the wall a brown guitar
containing thin, transparent, white afternoons
the crawl of stucco shadows
under blue tile roofs

and a man, who after much effort
has succeeded in visualizing
his own limitations,
the absolute crackling edge of his knowledge:

a low green hedge, grown close
and neatly trimmed, and in the field beyond,

a man plowing.

* * *

Say You Will

Floating face
down
in calm green sea,
I imitate the drowned man,

approximate his casual drift
up onto sand    there really is
no hurry now   arms out,

legs limp, letting go
to subtleties of wind and current,

amino absorbed.
But life’s transparent membrane
stiffens miles thick,

to disallow my knowing
all he knew  say you will
say you will.

* * *

Sucking Chest Wound

I am telling you this
from a great distance
though my breath
is in your ear.
The sound
when you were hit
was like a board
struck sharply on a pillow.
Pieces of your shirt
turned stupidly in the air.
I saw and heard
the beautiful pink froth
of your entry wound
build tiny sea-foam sculptures
that swayed in outlaw exhalations.
I went by the book
and placed the wrapper
from my pack of Camels on the hole
but it imploded
like a plastic star.
I stuffed in all the money
I had, but it wasn’t enough;
black silk pajamas followed
and a severed ear
that laughed blood
but still the new red mouth
breathed wrongly on.
You need to know
that only when I filled
the hole with earth
did your insane lung
stop its monotonous whistle.
I packed in dirt
until your mouth and nose were full
and they carried you off
like a palm tree.

Hard to imagine a more perfect morning; mild, gentle wind from the southwest, wide beach, firm sand made for walking.  Everybody we met was smiling and had something to say about the morning.  It had that kind of effect, an atmosphere of soft acceptance and grace that just put you in a good mood.  Run of dead jellies and crabs apparently over.  Sand fleas starting to show; the small ones.  Won’t see the whoppers until July, the ones that make it that far.

Sea Foam

Nothing on the beach but birds and these sea-foam sculptures.  They are intricate structures of millions of tiny bubbles adhering to each other, through surface tension, I guess, making extraordinary kinetic works of art that sway in the breeze and, in the first low rays of the sun, glow with an inner light, each individual bubble illuminated and defined, like little rooms.  Also known as spume, which sounds deeply suggestive of the ocean’s relationship to the womb,  it is created when sea water containing high concentrations of dissolved organic matter is agitated, trapping air in bubbles, which then gets blown around.  So there.

* * *

One of our correspondents recently wrote in with a brief anecdote about coming home to find her young dog engaged in digging to China, which got us thinking.  Many years ago, when we was but a young pup ourselves, we heard the term, were intrigued, and decided to give it a try.   Now this may be hard to imagine, but we were a very serious child, and everything we took on was done with deadly earnest resolve, whether that be playing Hopalong Cassidy, or digging irrigation ditches in the sand, or eating every other row of an ear of corn.  We lived in Tampa then, Santiago Street, on a corner lot.  The lot sloped to the street on the west side, maybe two feet of elevation, which seemed an immense uncharted steppe to me, and a perfect place for the North American terminus of this dig to China.  Unsponsored, I nevertheless I acquired a shovel from the garage, and went to work.  Focus is everything, and I remember a particular myopia about this venture, my little arms aching with each shovel-full I lifted from the deepening hole, the Florida sand clinging to the sweat on my finely tuned little torso, but the goal firmly in mind.  My only concern was not with language or cultural difficulties I might encounter, but whether I would be upside down when I finally emerged.  Two hours in I had made significant progress, which is to say I had gone down about three feet, and then my mother appeared, and none too happy.  Seems some concerned biddy of a neighbor had called to rat me out.  So much for community support for industry and international relations.    I was made to curtail the dig and fill in the hole.

With that in mind we have encouraged The Baby in even the slightest proclivity for digging on the beach, but thus far he shows only fleeting and infrequent interest.  We believe that will change when he develops a larger world view, specifically that China is clear on the other side of the world, and that digging there from here is not only a worthwhile endeavor, but a family tradition.  He seems serious enough.

* * *

We rushed our beach walk a little this morning after looking at the weather radar, left coffee unfinished and paper unread, to get it in before the rain came.  Wide smooth beach, combed by southwest winds, littered again by dead jelly fish.  Rain arrived a half-hour after we returned home, accompanied by rolling thunder, but no local lightning.  We love morning thunderstorms.  The only thing better than a morning thunderstorm is one at night out in the ocean.  With distance you can see whole storms, and get a clear picture of how fierce they can be.  The light show is spectacular, crackling flashes lighting up the ominous shapes of clouds, nature’s distant artillery barrage.  Sometimes we’ll pull up a chair and watch for the duration.

And then there’s Heat Lightning.  Remember heat lightning?  I don’t know about the rest of the country, but that was a common term growing up in Florida, referring to a mostly July and August phenomenon of nights too hot to bear, flashes of lightning in the distance with no thunder or rain.  As a kid you just accepted that it was caused by things just being so hot, lightning formed.  Hell, the name of it said everything you needed to know.  Well, after a lifetime of this acceptance, I started thinking about the phenomenon in more detail a few years ago, and looked it up.  Here’s what Webster’s says:  vivid and extensive flashes of electric light without thunder seen near the horizon esp. at the close of a hot day and ascribed to far-off lightning reflected by high clouds. So it’s not quite what we thought, not the almost magical, heat-induced occurrence of lightning in the sky without a storm. Oh, it’s heat-induced alright, as all thunderstorms partially are, and it turns out that’s just what it is.  A thunderstorm.  Only so far away you can’t hear the thunder, the flashes reflected in cloud tops.  Still wonderful, but I was a little disappointed.  Heat Lightning was always the visual manifestation of the mysterious relationship of a kid with nature, a special phenomenon that defied explanation, yet indicative of an understanding of the universe that pre-dated and superseded book knowledge.  Too much?  Maybe.  But there is nevertheless a sadness in letting go of my old acceptance.  So maybe I won’t.  The same goes for smelling rain before it arrives.  Remember that?  Still do it?  Well, I made the mistake of looking that up, too.  Turns out, like heat lightning, you do and you don’t; it is and it isn’t.  What you’re smelling is ions released from the ground due to changes in electrical fields as a storm approaches.  Still crazy, but not as satisfying.  I know, and water droplets reaching critical mass and hooking up with gravity explains rain, but it’s still water falling out of the sky, and I can’t think of anything freakier than that.

* * *

Stunningly clear, sunny morning, especially in light of all the rough weather yesterday.  Ocean a beautiful azure and flat as a table top.  The swell I anticipated didn’t materialize.  I’m guessing the storm was moving too fast, too far south.  Anyhoo, a beautiful day again here on Skinny Island.

* * *

April is the cruelest month, Mr. Eliot said.  We’ll see.  For us it means shifting into another gear, donning our beret, and posing as a painter.

Sea Grapes

We have been accepted as a fine arts exhibitor in the 48th Annual Isle of Eight Flags Shrimp Festival, Fernandina Beach, Amelia Island, Florida, April 30 and May 1.  It will be a homecoming of sorts.  The ancestors had a little ole cotton plantation there starting in the late 1700s, which operated until The War of Northern Intervention, and the old family cemetery is still there, and remains open for business for the well-qualified.  We will be set up in a 10×10 tent and will be showing oils and acrylics . . . for sale!  Busy this month redesigning and building our display system, as well as putting out a few new pieces.  Stop by if you can.  It’s a great festival, celebrating the once large shrimping industry on the island.  Great art, great music, great shrimp.  Come on by.  (Shameless Plug.)  Check out the Festival page at http://www.islandart.org/shrimp_festival.htm.

* * *

Strong cold front tangling with warm moist air kicked off a day of rough weather across the sunshine state today, and while friends and family in the Tampa/Lakeland area saw the worst, we had our share here on Skinny Island.  The rain began last night, then grew stronger throughout the morning, culminating in hail and stiff winds about two p.m.  Quieter after that, but rain continuing.

We put out everything we could find that might hold water to collect what we could for the dry time coming.  The garden is saturated.  I think with the expected sun tomorrow everything will grow about six inches.  Looking good so far.

Hard to tell the ocean from the sky most of the day; everything shades of gray with no discernible horizon.  With all the tornado warnings we were hopeful of a water spout or two, but nada.  Photograph of one at the top of the our must-have list, and time is becoming an issue.

Should be decent waves tomorrow as this front moves off shore.  Starting to see a little bump out there now.  Energy translates.

Garden Update