Island

Photo: Diego Fernandes 2009

A secret voyage
In the untold long ago
Across immense seas
Unknown and terrifying
Currents carried our ship
To a hidden island
On the very edge
Of eternity

Peaceful suns
Warmed our lives
Amid green leaves
Sitting at the tide line
Of a golden beach
We didn’t hear
What was said
By whispering sand

“A great wind is blowing
Centuries of seasons
Across your lives
And the river is drying
The caravels weighed anchor
Set sails and departed
On the west wind
While you were playing”

Now night comes
And the savage moon
Is masked by storm
It cannot find us
I fell into a mirage
Remembering your kiss
And the deepening shadow
Has taken you

Signal

Photo: Diego Fernandes 2009

There is that alien light again,
Drifting around the port periphery
Floating in the offshore fog.

Waves crawl the quay wall
Channel markers are flashing
Harbor Master consent has gone.

A surfer is chasing down his stoke
A camera gathers scattered light
A heart is pumping blood.

I keep thinkin’ they wants to land
To browse this ‘ere exotic port o’ call
To muck about with rum and riot.

But they are still waiting out there
Now lightless and without signal
Silent as rags on the Dutchman.

A mooring awaits and pinnace
The telegraph marks a welcome
A maiden longs for converse.

Heading to a pineal pier
Or outbound for celestial psyche
The captain seems uncertain.

The tide is high and channel clear
Either way, naught thwarts or bars
But a call of beat to quarters.

To Float Upon The Sea

Photo: Diego Fernandes 2008


To float upon the sea
We must make ready
To leave dry land.

Floating on the sea
Treasure is my vessel
And air to breathe.

Floating on the sea
Storms and current stir
The voyager to alien shores.

Floating on the sea
Cast overboard your coin
Acumen crafts purchase.

Floating on the sea
Answers have doubt
Packed in the hold

Floating on the sea
Needs launch and harbor
A mystery to solve.

To float upon the sea
I do not need a name
But a course wants plotting.

The Visitor

PHOTO: Diego Fernandes 2009

I live searching
For quiet breaths
At your shoreline.
My intemperate life
Slowly drying, fading
In winter’s sun.
Your water's clear
But passing floods
Of passing years
Left scattered detritus
Sunken dreams
Treasure from strangers
Thrown overboard
For future discovery.

I glance behind
My future where
I had yet left
No trace print,
Where my soles
Impressions wander
Bereft of weight.
Little shrines built
Where the recent
Living found long
Dead forests grown
Matured, vanished
Root and branch
Twig and leaf
Before their time.

I chase waters
Toward the sky
And simple nimbus
Reflect vaguely.
My path beckons
Urging flight.
Become a river
In the desert
Whisper skeletons
And broken glass.
Remember nothing
Save Hesperides.
Can memory
Injure the path
If it does not
Injure me?

Pacific Postings

Photo: Diego Fernandes 2007

A couple of days before Memorial Day, an appointment with a dentist for a second opinion and I want a trip to the beach. I need a trip to the beach. So my friend and I pack up our camera stuff and jump in his car and head for Point Reyes National Seashore.

My agitation from the dental appointment is so great I forget to bring sunblock. When we finally arrive at Point Reyes I realize this and my friend pulls out something that looks like a roll-on deodorant which I laugh at and turn down but my friend insists that it is not deodorant, it's a hiking lubricant with sunblock in it.

A hiking lubricant. Something you apply where something might chafe. With sunblock. If clothing is chafing somewhere, that means it's rubbing on your body and irritating it. If clothing is irritating your body wouldn't it be covering the part of the bady that's being chafed? If it's covered why does it need sunblock? Doesn't matter, the sunblock worked even though it smelled kind of funny.

As we drove through the Olema Valley, which sits atop the San Andreas Fault, I couldn't help but notice the beauty of this place. The Point Reyes National Seashore to the west with its conifers, California bay-laurel trees, oaks and wildflowers rather promiscuously showing themselves to the bees and tourists like myself, always gives me a sense of anticipation. That sense is exceptional in the spring when sunlight has a crisp quality which has attracted painters for a couple of centuries.

We took Limantour Beach road over the ridge-top of Point Reyes and parked in one of those lots that have been created a few hundred yards from the ocean. We had to wait for a woman with four children, unloading her van with beach paraphernalia to close her door so we could park. While she was unloading and we were getting our camera stuff together her children took off at high speed for the water in a comic follow-the-leader kind of full-tilt run. It was nice to see them filled with the same sort of anticipation I felt.

I offered to help their mother carry her beach things which she refused but I felt better for the attempt. After this semi-charitable effort we walked out to the beach and began to take photos. I had taken a few when I finally figured out the timing on the digital camera I was using. It is an older Olympus with an amazing zoom but its speed of response needs a different kind of understanding than my film cameras.

It was one of those moments when everything comes together. I was looking through the viewfinder at breaking waves and thinking "if only I could catch one of those at the right moment", and then I pressed the camera trigger half way to focus the zoom lens which worked the way it was supposed to, then watched as the wave started to break and in a moment of emotional overload pressed the trigger all the way and heard the digital shutter beep and voilá I had a picture of a breaking wave. My first successful shot of something moving.

The big success here was not the wave; the big success was the understanding I got for the timing of the camera. I have been trying to capture action shots with no success. I almost had an inner glow; my anticipation completely paid off with an "ah-hah, so that's the way it works!"

Maybe timing is everything.