Things I Learned on St. Margaret's Bay, and: Bodies of Water

Things I Learned on St. Margaret's Bay

Some days out here on the water, the gullsstand still in the wind. It whips the wavesinto swells taller than your flat is long.Know that I won't hear you over the crashand roar. If you lose an oar, you may die.

Check your painter. A bad bowline could meanI leave you floating out here on the bay.

Tuna are social creatures. If we don'tcatch another soon, this one will dieno matter how many mackerel and codwe move from the trap to the pound.

Don't wear those gloves. They might catchin the winch and take your hand or arm.Learn to take the gobfish stings like me.Surviving out here can mean leaving behindthings your mother put into your suitcase.

I don't hate you. I just can't let you die.

Squid make good squirt guns, but don't you dare.

When we clean the leader, pick out the dogfishand rockfish and tell me where the twinehas snapped. I'll need to fix those holes.

Gaff sunfish by the eye and toss them back.You may think they're cute, but they're worth nothing.

Forget the money and keep tossing themmore fish. I've never seen porpoises so close.

Here, take this. It's been a bad summerand it's not much, but the sea is like that.Some years we get twelve bluefin and trucksline up at the launch every day. Yearslike this, we're lucky that one we did catchwas still fresh when we pulled it from the water.

Don't rub your eyes. The worst pain I everfelt, a mackerel scale got stuck in my eye.The doctor couldn't find it for two weeks.

When the air stills at dawn and fog hidesthe shore, you might hear a moose or loon call.

Bodies of Water

I

Two days later and a thousand miles north,we combed the beach for scallops, scanned the skyfor eagles, checked the tree line for grizzlies,watched the waves for humpbacks and orcas.We spent those first days of our life togethersomewhere between land and sea, earth and water,a place more real than the many houses since.Sometimes I dream we're back there on that shore,writing in the sand, the sky above usfull of white clouds reflecting off the Sound.Ten years later and a hundred miles inland,I wake up in the middle of the nightand mistake the rumble of highway trafficfor the steady thunder of surf on the beach.

II

Overhead, a heron flaps through the mist.Down below, we pause to examine paw printsin the wet sand—paired pads and five claws.We follow the bear cub along the shoreline,past matted clumps of eel grass, brokenoyster shells, logs scoured by sand and wind.The water steams a white wall of fog.Then we find a larger set of paired printsand learn the thrill that prickles the napeof the neck, that works its way tinglingdown arms and spine, that rushes roaringthrough the ears, that darkens the edge of sight.We pause again and crows rise from the brush.You take my hand and we turn back for home.

III

Driftwood logs cradled us against the windas stones clattered beneath our shifting feetand spray at our backs carried scents of mossthat clung to spruce and pine out on the rocks.When we kissed, I knew the salt I tastedon your lips was the salt you tasted on mine.Like diving weights around our waists, agatesand jade pulled our coats toward the damp sand.Stepping across the stream, we both fell in.The slick bank streaked red dirt on knees and hands.We made love at home that night, and I knewour lives had changed, knew we'd found the truth:I am a river. You are an ocean...