This poem features immersions in four locations, in the British Isles and in northern California. It grew from a project in which I tracked water’s behavior over a period of months, after reading this statement by Polish sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman: “For liquids it is mostly time that matters.” I have come to agree through immersion not only in water but also in the mutable record of the human species on our planet.

Where Water Channels or Holds

four immersions in two continents

Ynys Llanddwyn, a tidal island

sainted finger of Wales gravelly shores

checkered-back turnstones, dexterous feet

we too wade icewater

admit our bruises, sweat ourselves inland

dunes and hills parch marks appear

ancient henges and walls

where water channels or holds

deep down

exposed by drought, drone-documented

BC Celts make love

fraying grass blankets above

in Wales, Ireland, England

the

Rebekah Bloyd 83 one Handa Island,

wildlife reserve offcoast of Scotland, west tufted by nests, shit-spattered sandstone

surface & dart

seadive & surface

cliffs & sea stack

razorbills, puffins black-etch the skies

cross island, blackhouses

unthatched

summer’s heat wave atop

my freckled limbs

flail

valley river

Río de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe

woven with Ohlone Spaniards plums silicon chips bitterns hidden in the reeds I believe

Do you? Dip

your gaze

south-to-north, her singular body stretches underlies surfaces

beyond

85 three berm-based circle of turkey vultures

Bodega Beach, California

hook & pull scuff & claw dead gull flesh

we walk where damp sand gives imprint, release imprint, release amethyst

jellies adorn the beach face here here

here

So many! locals say

Hole in the Head, locals said

Bodega Head’s proposed nuclear power plant

builder brains failed synapses like eels

black-crowned night herons

emptied themselves from the project

pied-billed grebes song sparrows inhabit

hole-pond

bowl

deep

foot

a