The Pacific

I’ve been told how cool I am
oh so mellow, even chill
It seems by all appearances
to be so
Let me be the first to say
I have my moments, when
internally I sequester a
Primal scream-you shall
have to take my word for it-
Terror is hard to share
You see, I believe
deep within my being
that if I let out one peep,
It will escalate to an unending,
ear bursting battle cry
So, I zip it with a sly smile
and nobody suspects the
trouble I’m in
and then, magically
not giving it voice,
it dissipates, my pulse
rate slows down and
I’m okay again
This happens a few times
a day, but nobody knows
except me
Everybody says: I appreciate
your calm
Together, we chuckle about
my unflappability and
mystically by others affirmation
I am the Pacific-
The Pacific, yeah, that’s me.

First Time on a Commercial Fishing Boat

Out of West Port, minimum age 12 was I

Pop never gave anyone directions in

what to expect- he was an experiential teacher

Like he never offered Dramamine, but

said he’d forgotten to tell me- and that

it was unfortunate that I was feeding the fish!

It was a dubious voyage to say the least as the

boat bucked high and slammed down

like a hard belly flop on the other side

of the Bar

The wind picked up and even at 12 I could see

we were in for a growler

Then, I was body slammed into the rail and

my nose bloodied, my head went all spindrifty,

as the captain hauled me up in the net so

I wouldn’t be thrown about like a rag doll

in the storm

There wasn’t going to be much hooking and slicing

‘til things calmed down, so Pop started singing
some salty sea chanteys and to keep sanity, I’m sure

the other fishermen joined in

“Weigh hey and up she rises…” corked the occasion and

when I got off the boat smelling of puke with

a bloody shirt-Pop gave Mom a sheepish grin

Workshop poem at the FisherPoets Gathering

February 2014- Astoria, Oregon.

Word list: growler, bloody, slimy, corked, spindrift, slicing, net, sanity,

dubious, hook, bar

raintreepoet, reporting :-)

Phytoplankton & Krill

 

 I woke up thinking about

Phytoplankton

and how it was the dominant

nourishment in the sea

I could not quite remember

in order, the critters that

ate each other, one larger

than the krill who ate

 the phytoplankton

all the way up to the humongous

Gray whale, largest on the planet,

its heart as big as an automobile, 
who ate the krill that fed on the phytoplankton

It was a segment of “The Blue Planet”

I showed to a group of freshmen

in science class, so beautifully

filmed, one could feel a part of it,

if only for an hour

Of course nature can be what

Humans call cruel

Black and white killer whales

chased the huge gray whale

and her calf for miles and miles-

until the calf was so exhausted

that then, the pod of 15 killer whales

attacked and drowned it

They only ate a part of the jaw and tongue

leaving the corpse to be

stripped clean by other sea life

Mama Whale swam on, bereft,

survival depending on finding

her pod and food- krill and

Phytoplankton             

  2/26/2015