Winter 2008, Issue 17





   Aground! by Henry Strauss

   Breaking by Kathryn Magendie

   ANTARCTICA, THE GLOBAL WARNING by Sebastian Copeland

   Virgin Shark Birth by Diane Buccheri

   Salt by Tom Sheehan

   In the Realm of Pure Thought by Larry Tritten

   Bridge Hut by Wallace J. Nichols

   Ixchel, the 12th Part by Derek S. Rowley

   Virgin Surfer by Christine Brooks

   A Red Shovel in the Sand by Melba Milak

   Splendor by Janelle Segarra





This issue begins with a newborn dolphin swimming in perfect synchronicity with her mother –– innocent, agile, joyful, inquisitive. This issue is about beginnings –– "Born from the present, a reflection from the past, from moments of chaos into an utter peace . . . It's all tragedy and comedy. It's all a love story. It's all about love."

Henry Strauss tells his riveting tale of veering off course during a wicked Newfoundland storm. His U.S. Navy ship is grounded near cliffs. The townsfolk, mostly fishermen, battle the raging blizzard to save him as he strives to save his fellow sailors. Now age 93, Henry continues to sail, with the love of his life.

Kathryn Magendie tells of hearts breaking. Husband and wife are polite and pleasant, but deception and pain lies underneath their playful day on the beach with their children. Orcas swim powerfully offshore, creating their own drama. The two worlds are so apart, yet the same.

Sebastian Copeland shares his photography of magnificent Antarctic icebergs, and shares excerpts from his book ANTARCTICA THE GLOBAL WARNING, a deep and thoughtful discussion of global warming.

A virgin shark gives birth! Students and their teachers at Carl Hayden High School in Phoenix, Arizona are the third group of people to witness a virgin shark birth in captivity. Female sharks can duplicate their own genes to reproduce exact replicas of themselves.

Salt. Tom Sheehan brings us back, back to the days when the salt was felt drifting from the ocean along the Saugus River. Days were deep and slower then, powerful.

In the realm of pure thought Larry Tritton takes us on a journey to another realm with words fantastical yet sensible and practical. We get caught up in the largeness of the ocean and its creatures.

Wallace J. Nichols views San Francisco Bay from the highest point of the Golden Gate Bridge. There, his life is simple and very real.

Ixchel's saga continues with the goddess attempting to bring back Mayan rule, long ago taken by the Spanish.

A thirty-something virgin surfer surfs for the first time, and meets a shark!

A red shovel in the sand . . . during winter's cold, Melba Milak thinks of summer days on the beach, the laughter gone quiet, peace takes its place.

This is splendor divine –– the ocean dresses herself and offers her bounty.




Spring 2008, Issue 18




    I Am Come from the Sea by Marlene Moon

    By the Bay by Diane Buccheri

    Night River, East Saugus by Tom Sheehan

    The Blue Whale by James Michael Dorsey

    Sonnet to a Golden Urn by John Thomas Clark

    Roving the Deep Sea for Answers by Cat Campbell

    The Bluest Red, the Red Sea Reef by Michelle Borinstein

    Curtain Rising by Christie Gorsline

    Spring Secret by Melba Milak

    Ixchel, the 13th Part by Derek S. Rowley

    First Love by Susan Biddy

    New Day by Diane Buccheri



"I am come from the sea like laughing waves washing back and forth . . ." Marlene Moon faces her uncertain future by reflecting upon her past. "For with this I will believe always I survive . . . splashing into my future."

We are drawn into Diane Buccheri's home by the bay beginning with the morning's catch, chased by seagulls, sea oats swaying by the dock. Golden summer sun shines on the outdoor cats and leads us into her home. During evening's meal with her love, the bay shapes and reshapes, "its movement something like the orange candle's flicker." Raindrops fall with thunder and lightning, cooling night's air and tomorrow's heat. She awakens to find . . . it's all a dream.

"When I shake day and boots from feet, plunge them in this silver rewarding, feel sea's edge . . ." Fishing, Tom Sheehan celebrates the river of his life, a silver ribbon flowing to the sea, mixing brine and salt.

From a catamaran off California's coast, James Dorsey meets blue whales, the largest animal in history, swimming every ocean of the world today. "These giants are gentle . . . and we . . . have a responsibility to protect them from ourselves."

King Midas reveled in golden luxury, John Thomas Clark reminds us of his terrible touch. "For gold, modern times brook a tidal turn to our trusts . . . Ocean is pure gold and should be treated as such." Why do we dirty our ocean with chemicals?

Roving the deep blue sea, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's scientists learn about carbon dioxide's vital role in the ocean's health. Cat Campbell explores with them and shares her findings.

Michelle Borinstein brings us to treasures in the Red Sea. That too, is polluted and abused as we use it for industry and recreation. Artificial reefs are in place now, holding our hope for environmental healing.

The curtain rises for Christie Gorsline as she and her husband set sail around the world through clear and calm dawn, escorted by leaping, pirouetting dolphins by afternoon, illuminated by a full moon during the night. "The water pulls like a magnet, and so we go to sea, as our ancestors did before us." (Anonymous)

Spring's secret uncovers a shipwreck on Melba Milak's shore following winter's waves tearing the beach. "The wind played snatches of eerie melodies . . . But today . . . dolphins came to play in the waters in front of me, and then the sun whispered . . . spring is on its way."

"The late afternoon breeze brought the sound of the crashing surf up to Ixchel . . ." who plans to bring back to life the Mayan god Itzamna. Her escaped captives plan to bring her to justice and shake the truth out of the myth.

"One day I could walk along this beach with my very first love . . ." Susan Biddy writes from Cozumel, "but for now I'll just collect seashells along the seashore, and dream of my first kiss."




Summer 2008, Issue 19

   Back to the Sea by Eric Pinder

   Intertidal Zone by Alisa Gordaneer

   Lions of the Sea by James Dorsey

   A Private Ceremony by Tom Sheehan

   Emperor Penguins by Diane Buccheri

   The Emperor's New Woes by John Thomas Clark

   Antarctic Sojourn by George Burden

   Tingle by Diane Buccheri

   Lifting the Fog by Gloria Bencivenne

   The Sea Buoy by Melba Milak

   Dolphin Glide by Jana Orsinger

   Learning to Breathe by Louise Beech

   Darkness by Debra Wolf

   Ixchel, the Final Part by Derek Rowley


From the weather station at the top of Mount Washington ("the highest paying job in New England), Eric Pinder journeys back to the sea, reflecting "Our link to the sea stretches back billions of years, back to an era when lightning crackled in a wispy, unbreathable atmosphere. Meteorites punctured the continental crust, and the impacts hurled dust clouds high into the air. It was a harsh world, but already in the oceans, life thrived . . . Though our own branch on the mammalian family tree split from the whales' millions of years ago, we still encounter these seafaring cousins of ours . . . Ages ago, some mysterious impulse or need pulled the ancestors of that whale back into the water . . . Once I climbed Mount Katahdin on an exceptionally clear day. The great height allowed me to gaze across a hundred miles and see sunlight glinting off the distant Atlantic."

In the intertidal zone, Alisa Gordaneer explores her sensualities poetically mixing among the crevices of rocks, in the folds of driftwood, clinging to another like a starfish or a barnacle, swinging at low tide where the ocean laps in the wind's rustles and ripples "and everything blows up."

Sea lions swim alongside marine naturalist James Michael Dorsey as he kayaks Southern California's Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara Island. Thriving under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1973, their increasing populations are dismaying tourists and devouring Pacific salmon, whose numbers are dwindling quickly. "While our bewildered lawmakers wring their hands and try to decide what action to take, the sea lion remains an integral part of the California coast, and I look forward to their continued companionship during my paddling adventures."

For twelve years Tom Sheehan did not catch one fish. "A river's dying aches into Earth's heart, begins upstream, inland, begins with us who envy its freedom, its plunge to seas, its long passage feeding the mother of all." At last, he catches one –– "a new glistening". In celebration, he loosed the hollowed taking, "I will feed the river with itself".

Into one of the world's most bitterly cold, desolate, and windy places, emperor chicks weighing less than half a pound come into this world and begin their hearty struggle to survive on a nest of sea ice. "Now however, the estimated 200,000 emperor pairs and their young in 40 Antarctic colonies battle added challenges: warming ocean temperatures, melting sea ice, and diminishing food supplies." In addition to the effects of global warming, industrial fisheries take their food supplies, and their nets entangle and drown the penguins. Increased "predators, disease, habitat destruction, tourist disturbance, pollution, and oil spills add to their struggle.

Making his way through the the Antarctic in an ice breaker, George Burden meets gentoo penguins, seals, and more ice, massive ice. He dips in the frigid waters, furthering his goal to swim in every ocean of the world. The grandeur, the life within the quiet cold . . . "Is it so inappropriate, I wonder, that baptism follow communion with Antarctica"?

Swimming with her father along New Jersey's coast, Gloria Bencivenne becomes lost in the fog. Her father's one leg cramps, and she struggles, as a young child with her courage and her ability to meet him. It's her uncle, one who fears and respects the ocean after being torpedoed by a Japanese submarine during World War II, who rescues them.

Lost in the fog in a boat, Melba Milak listens for the chanting sea buoy to feel her way home among the shifting shoals.

Having swum with wild dolphins off the coast of Kona, Jana Orsinger goes home to Texas "carrying this joy . . . I show it to everyone. Most nod and smile, then go on with their lives, unmoved by my heart exploding with hope for this hopeless world."

One little girl finds comfort under the water, breath pushed beyond limits, among her dolphin friends. She succombs to their beckoning to escape her father's abusiveness. Both parents find her, gone, in the tub. Louise Beech's "Learning to Breathe" takes your breath away.

"I appreciate the darkness I am walking in, I bathe in the darkness, I wear the darkness as a cloak . . . I want to swim in the deep, deep, deep darkness . . . " (Debra Wolf)

In the darkness, Ixchel's evil mindlessness and deeds come to light. Justice is brought to those whose loved ones she murdered. And for them, a new love begins on a Mexican island . . .

Take a Look at OCEAN Summer 2008





Fall 2008, Issue 20


   Saugus Clams and Things East Saugus by Tom Sheehan

   Distant Song by Robert Wykes

   Paradise by Dawn Starin

   Nerissa by Kathryn Magendie

   The Wrecker's Daughter by R. F. Long

   Ocean's Call by Christine Brooks

   On Sethia's Birthday by Marlene Moon

   If You Will Hold My Hand by Lisa LeShaw

   Touching Whales by Joy Ehle

   Smoke in the Night by Melba Milak

   Emoceans by Joel Levin

   New World Navigators by John Thomas Clark

   From The Journals of Constant Waterman by Matthew Goldman



"The rich tapestry of East Saugus –– extending from an incalculable point somewhere east of Cliftondale Square and from a similar line on Bailey’s Hill –– runs off to the West Lynn line, and the border of Revere wracked by salt and things sometimes brackish, and thence out to the vast sea, the feeding and spawning Atlantic. Over the past century the streets of this section of our town have been dotted by clam shacks and shucking houses and lobster boat moorings and whole families have been immersed in the businesses of clams and worms and lobsters. It is easily seen that life on the sea, or at the edge of it, makes for stark individuals, and families of individuals. Enterprises do it, economics and need do it. Character does it. Shape and conditions become conditions and shape. Things form, such as ruggedness, character, and legend. The rich tapestry gets richer with its individual stories." Tom Sheehan's tale of Saugus clams and things East Saugus is haunting and rich.

"As you sing all the while a forever song of life in the sea . . . moving through my ocean of air like long liquid waves . . . some forgotten part of me hears . . . and thus knows with gnostic sureness, you were long, long ago the aquaeous mother nest from which I fledged." Robert Wykes' poem sings a distant song of the ocean, striking a chord within us all.

"Kauai is blindingly beautiful. The mountains, the extraordinary double rainbows, the scent of wild ginger and plumeria, the white sand beaches, the vistas that go on and on for miles –– all of them seem to wrap the visitor up in one large colorful lei of paradise." Tourism, though, is ravaging the island of paradise environmentally and socially. Dawn Starin, a frequent visitor and anthropologist, points out. "Kauai is breathtaking and awesome and fabulous and laid back. There are traffic jams. There is racial tension. There are poor people. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. "

"The day I entered the ocean, I knew I’d never return to land. The decision was made once I felt the waters close over my head, my shoulders, my waist, my legs, and finally, my bare feet. Deeper deeper I swam, my lungs at first feeling as if they’d burst open, then as I took in a bit of water and a bit more and just a bit more, my lungs accepted their new ways. Down I swam . . The I who is I is gone. The last of me shed away. The new me breaks the water in a spray and the girl watching points, says, 'Look! What kind of fish it that, Mother?' and the mother answers, 'Don’t ask so many questions. What’s wrong with you anyway?' And I will jump again, and again, and again, until the little girl has all the answers she needs." Kathryn Magendie's Nerissa swims into fantasy and we with her.

"The breeze tugged jealously at the shawl and the brooch, but Jarlaith’s love held it firm. No wind spirit would harm her tonight. She felt his ship approaching on the sea, heard the song of the ocean. The sea was rising, and on nights like this nothing in the world could harm her. The thought almost made her laugh, but she knew that a noise so close to the house, even on a night like this, might reach her father’s keen ears and the last thing she wanted was him on her tail . . . A wave burst from the others, powerful and sudden, magnificent. Foam and spray created the image of a woman in its heart, a woman with flowing hair and sea-blue eyes that streamed with tears. She reached out slender arms, like a lover at first, but with fingers that would never let go of the thing she caught. With no sound but the roar of the ocean, she snatched the Old Man from the shore, dragging him down as it lifted the lovers up in the swell. " R.F. Long's Irish changling has power over the sea that draws us in.

"She has been calling me back for quite some time now and reminding me to dance, And smile, and laugh . . ." And so Christine Brooks answers the ocean's call.

"After swimming out, I laid atop, floating on the surface of our Mother Ocean’s briny breast, held there by her horizonless hand, held there by my daughter. Our sweet relinquished girl’s body, cremated, was scattered there. On this new remembering day, her birthday, and my anniversary-to-remember swim, I could hear her whispering over and again, “Mama, I want to tell you . . . !” Cued by wild dolphins, Marlene Moon celebrates the present and acknowledges something larger than all of us.

"If you will hold my hand I’ll walk with you along the ocean shore . . . " Lisa LeShaw walks us through the passing seasons of life. "Not only will I hold your hand my most precious, special friend, I’ve never had any intention to ever let it go."

Joy Ehle touches a wild baby whale and is forever touched. "A mother whale guides her baby, all innocence and trust, to our panga. The young whale rolls her head to the side and I touch her lips. I don’t know how long her huge round eye follows me before our eyes meet in silence. There are legends about looking into the eye of a whale. Legends that the experience may change my life forever.
All memories of a noise-filled and troubled world float away."

Last night just after the sun went down, I looked out my kitchen window and saw something orange-y blowing in the wind. Maybe clouds? Maybe sand? Maybe smoke? Smoke! By the time I called 911, the first fire truck was racing down my street toward the beach in Hatteras, North Carolina. Melba Milak learns new adventures living on the edge of land and sea.

At sunrise Ocean deposited a message in foam at my feet: “Here unto time begun, no never through dim passageways borne Again.” Ocean is, if anything, an enigmatic force, forever drawing from her depths, self-consciously biblical at times, but reveling in word play. I backed away from the frothy hem of her skirt and considered the mood. This was a time of orange and pink, of darkled Clouds, the glowing tip of Sun peering Kilroylike over Horizon. I said to the awakening elements, “Your mood seems like it wants to overtake me today. What’s in this power play?” Wind started, the other voices joining right in, Echo, as usual, lagging behind." Joel Levin's every breath, every thought, every move is a unilogue with the elements. "'Beautiful,' I said, steeped in thought of the immortal masterpieces of humankind that breathed the House of Nature. 'Beautiful,' repeated Echo from afar."

"From Tralee in the Kingdom of Kerry, Brendan The Navigator would ferry, in a skin boat of tanned oxhides, his monks to the new world . . . Although the rest is history, like Brendan and Columbus, the mystery
of uncharted waters lies dead ahead for me. But, Lex, my new sea dog, will shed my barnacles of uncertainty, lead the way . . ." Poet John T. Clark's service dog, Lex, brings hope and joy into his life.

"Yesterday was Thanksgiving. What better way to thank this world for its many blessings than go out to greet the wind, touch the sea, round an island, be kissed by a sunbeam? Apparently, it was much too gorgeous a day for the common sailor. Given the choice between black backed gull and turkey, he chose the turkey . . . We had nearly the whole of the wholesome sea to ourselves –– one more thing to be truly thankful for." Constant Waterman Matthew Goldman celebrates his time in the wind and waves.

Take a Look at OCEAN Fall 2008