early morning
in the harbor
and the fog hasn’t yet
burnt off.
it never does really ever
burn, not here
in this rainforest,
beneath phlegmatic lung
of our layered sky.
a sea lion erupts
huffing wetly in the channel
a few feet from me,
a salmon
in its whiskered jaws.
i am briefly
startled and the sea
lion is triumphant
in its atavistic pedigree,
enthusiastically whipping
its head, ripping
the salmon, swallowing
a bite of fish’s red
flesh. hands
in woolen pockets
i walk from the transient
float in this blurry harbor,
impermanent yes
of course, and transient.
the chattering harbor
is smeared with oil, bits
of soloing seaweed,
effluvium from all
these floating souls.
when the sun angles
its unblinking eye,
brief, often obscured,
onto our hollow harbor,
rainbows appear in water’s surface.
when the light is
diffuse and vague,
harbor water returns
to mottled skin,
viscous, clinging.
i enter the public
bathroom in the harbor
parking lot. i am
now on the illusion
of what we agree to
be solid land, we
water-based humans,
though still i feel
the swell and tilt
of sea. dropping
my pants to sit
upon stalled toilet, i am
careful not to let the material
bunched confidently
at my ankles, touch
the damp bathroom floor.
a human lurches
in just after me,
i see nothing
of this person other than:
imitation leather boots,
erratic and stumbling step,
furtive, swollen sound
of streaming urine.
some refer to sky as
Wisdom Mind,
that in its possible infinity,
we can perhaps gain
some degree of clarity
as to the workings of our own
mind. maybe
the opening patch of blue,
the fog wandering off,
maybe this inspires in me
a measure of dread
precisely as i am still unable
to look openly onto
the terrifying vastness of Mind.
under branching lung
of cloud i feel more equipped
to breathe. a sea lion,
likely the very same one
from a few minutes earlier,
breaking its fast on salmon,
again squelches forth.
i am this time not
startled.
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