Monhegan Island

“Water in motion is far

from level,” said the poet who

brought me here.

I climb Ambrose’s hill and see his

“not-native books and hat,” his

view of the harbor, and keep

going until the fir trees, each

with their “emerald turkey foot,”

mark the edge of the sea.

No one ushers me down the

narrow, unimproved steps

to the granite nook in the cliff

where I find my seat—

protected from the afternoon sun, my neighbors

anonymous insects and tufts

of grass. Below me, the gulls

on their blacker rocks raucously mock

my long absence.

Their tickets to

this “drama of water against

rock” never expire. I come

only for the matinee.

Impossible to paint or

film, the surf pounds the glacier-cut

rocks that won’t be subdued

into roundness or sand. No victors here.

The rising green waves cover

the rocks with their

whiteness, their churning swirl, and then

succumb to the pull of the next

swell. Endlessly different but

unchanged for millennia.

Here at the inner wrist of

the earth, I feel

its pulse.