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OCEAN Magazine
SUMMER 2008, Issue 19
Back to the Sea
Eric Pinder
Intertidal Zone
Alisa Gordaneer
Lions of the Sea
James Dorsey
A Private Ceremony
Tom Sheehan
Emperor Penguins
Diane Buccheri
The Emperor's New Woes
John Thomas Clark
Antarctic Sojourn
George Burden
Tingle
Diane Buccheri
Lifting the Fog
Gloria Bencivenne
The Sea Buoy
Melba Milak
Dolphin Glide
Jana Orsinger
Learning to Breathe
Louise Beech
Darkness
Debra Wolf
Ixchel, the Final Part
Derek Rowley
A glimpse into this issue . . .
by Eric Pinder
Gusts herd the waves past barnacle-laden boulders. As the ocean crumbles onto land, cold
foam bubbles and swirls across my toes. The sun rises, casting sparks across the sand. The
breeze strikes my face, thick with spray. My jacket flutters, and my cheeks redden till I shiver
and turn away.
I conjure up childhood memories of running barefoot through these breaking waves, weaving
a string of wet footprints in my wake. After five long years away, I have returned to the sea.
Seated at my grandmother’s kitchen table in Millinocket, Maine, three hours from the coast, I
once severed my finger with a steak knife. Blood spattered onto my shirt. Instinctively, I lifted
the wound to my lips. But what I tasted wasn’t blood –– it was the salt of the sea.
My wound reminded me of our ancient kinship with the waves. Our blood is little more than
glorified seawater, a salty red stream saturated with hemoglobin and other bits of biological
flotsam. We are five-and-six-foot waves of seawater, packaged in skin, washed up onto shore
Read more in this issue.
Winter-born, in minus sixty degrees
Celsius, out of Mom’s pouch I’d freeze
To death in two minutes. But I’d weather
Those conditions. We chicks crèched together
In the spring, as south polar skuas dived
Out of the sky at us. Now I’ve survived
A shorter-than-expected trek across
The pack ice to the waters of the Ross
Sea –– it calved early. Again. In full fledge,
As it were, on my flight from the ice ledge
Into the ocean for my first real meal,
I avoid the jaws of a leopard seal
And I think on how, as greenhouse gases grow,
Our future generations will go with the floe
by John T. Clark
LEARNING TO BREATHE
by Louise Beech
I'm home, he called, his belt buckle as polished as ocean stones, his tone an undercurrent more dangerous than the
words.
Bubbles carry Kate’s hurt to the surface. Some spiral, fast, swirling like tiny kites caught in a playful wind. Others zigzag
through freezing water, lazy, burdened with the heaviest of pain. She hears them popping at the meniscus, sees her
worries dissolve in a soapy haze and fly out through the cracks in the tiles. It is all there is. She is. The water is. The
bubble is.
Dad pulled the cloth from the dinner table and the plates and cups scattered, sending spaghetti to the floor, and
he yelled, you shoulda put a bigger brick in front of the garage door you bitch, you shoulda known that little one
wouldn’t hold it, I had to get out of the car, open it, in that rain and wind; and he paused for breath, and on his
way to the door he turned to Kate and said, your mother’s a fool, are you listening to me, you never listen, just like
your useless mother.
Under the water there are no words. There are no tears. The salt does not run down her face, onto her tongue, bitter
and sarcastic. There is cold and echo and the syrupy feel of water caressing her throat. She opens her eyes again.
Hair floats in front of her face, fanning out like a mermaid’s tail. Swim little fish, swim to the bottom of the bath, where
the words don’t penetrate. She waves her hand in front of her eyes, mesmerized by the graceful slow motion of her
fingers, by the tiny, fairy bubbles that fly away from the movement, by the changing light.
Read more in this issue.
BLUE DANCE
Painting and words by Roger Hutchison
It is the place where the waters meet the heavens. The water dances a blue dance. Not blue with sadness, though that is a feeling I know
she sometimes feels, but a blue dance of water and sky –– a dance of life and death. A creation dance.
A storm is coming –– or is it the sun bursting forth from beneath the surface –– shattering the calm? The clouds twist and turn –– the waves
crash. Something is happening.
The paint, once held captive in a small tube, pours forth onto my fingers. I open my hands and place them on the surface of the canvas. I
spread the paint across the white void –– and the ocean begins to come to life. With a sense of abandon that only comes when I paint, I enter
the water I feel it, I taste it, I go beneath the surface.
www.rogerhutichison.blogspot.com
www.artistsofthesouth.com
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