Oceanic
1. Â Again an oriole has hung her nest among the cottonwoods just farther north, and soon inside the Baltimore hotel where my grandparents stood as newlyweds big horseshoe crabs will scuttle over the lobby floor while high tide laps through busted window frames and doors. 2. When the north wind came down out of the cedars onto the bay the boat turned slowly as the needle of a compass does in the palm of a man turning to find himself on a map. Â 3. Â Far down, under a sky without a moon or stars, when the dive light failed and the current along the wall of the reef gained force, he turned to find the lights of the others gone. Things in the total dark, even his own hands now, seemed hypothetical, and deep inside the ear the velocity of his heart. Â
Image Courtesy of the Smithsonian Open Access . Winslow Homer, Swells in the Ocean, 1895.
