surrounded
by flowers
empth greenhouse

North Beach
hanging at Caffe Trieste
     beat cops

Dead Reckoning

First the dark hole, unseen square of open space. My lost footing, the chaos of landing ushers in a week of pain. Skin scraped into rough terrain, lying awake musing on the risks of any fall, at my age.

running downwind
past Eagle Island light . . .
the buoy bell

Now, days off anchor in Penobscot Bay, looking up at agile crew scaling the mast of a hundred-foot ketch, coiling lines, hauling the soggy weight of sails. Hard to reckon what’s now frail in us, around us. Ancient rocks cradle endangered wildlife: an otter nosing up to peer at us, lobsters beneath, hobbled too by narrow escapes, still they inhabit these depths as their own.

sun-glistened bay
shadow of the rigging
in our wake