Sea Things (26 poems)

NOT MUCH IS KNOWN ABOUT HOW FISH SLEEP

The word described

Like broken bread the ship fell away

squid, kelp, carbon

Car bonnet

The sea also has carbon in it

NINE POEMS

I was lifting a film of carbon

Copy paper from a receipt book

When I went into the water my hands forward towards the wave

Two thoughts - like solicitors leaving separate offices - one

Around the inlet at the base of your neck

two the word estuary

Fish move like litter

GLITTER

In poet Robert Hass' recent collection

Time and Materials 

He uses it three times to describe
light on sea water

and glittering sea, glittering sea and
the water glitters hard against it

YESTERDAY AND DAY LENGTH

The word Thursday - daylight contained in it
Unusually large day and the stories of hearsay and lunacy on the sea 

Through history crime happened on a Thursday, as did
ecstasy. Take a whale. Lay it on a picnic blanket. 

THE CLICKING SOUND OF A REEF WHEN YOU PUT YOUR HEAD INTO THE SEA

Yesterday's Thursday poem. I didn't know it at the time

It was Wednesday

Sometimes the day tricks you and you allow it like
salmon at the other table, a muscle in your calf that aches after swimming 

The sea is like the skin of lettuce today. Is room temperature.
I open a drawer. Beside my bed filling up
all night the sea moves below me like
Christmas. 

THE SEA IN THE 1980s

Fish move like dolphins in certain light

Leaves hosed by sunlight

On holidays I went to the sea and was lifted out of it by my father
who was looking elsewhere      a wave 

Folded pieces of paper

In the 1980s the sea was bluer owing to northern light skipping off the paw paw
coloured swim suits and something to do with tide and starlight, washed atmosphere,
a broken up comet, I don't know, in the 80s the sea was bluer
I was about eleven
It came up to my shoulders 

**The title 'The Clicking Sound of a Reef When you Put your Head into the Sea' is a line from the poem 'Sweet like a Crow' by Michael Ondaatje