Hold Fast
after Jill Powers’ Holdfast: Seaweeds in a Time of Oceanic Change
Dairy Arts Center, Boulder, CO, March 4–April 3, 2016
Start with a boat. Even if
it hangs from the sky.
Even if it’s a floating
dream and the water’s
breaking below. You are
alone again in the evening.
Something about a silver ring
you didn’t see in the fog.
Start with fog, then,
lifting. Every morning
you don’t wake up
in San Francisco.
In Colorado,
you are landlocked.
You hydrate your mood
in its predictable shifting:
Tide. Ebb and flood. Current.
You want to be anchored
here. Vascularly. Anatomically.
You’ve been waiting forty seasons
for your sister, for an oceanic love.
Last week, seaweed appeared
in a waking dream. Waving.
Fingering the bottom of your paper
canoe. Wanting to cling
to something moving and not
moving at the same time.
So, start with a boat in fog.
Or a tossed stone. Or the abandoned
shell of a mollusk. Let your heart swell
like an underwater forest, swaying
hello, goodbye, hello.
