far ends of the lake
where no one lives or visits
no roads to get there

I just heard a loon-call on a TV ad
and my body gave itself
a quite voluntary shudder,
as in the night in East Africa
I heard the immense barking cough
of a lion, so foreign and indifferent.

But the lion drifts away
and the loon stays close,
calling, as she did in my childhood,
in the cold rain a song
that tells the world of men
to keep its distance.

It isn’t the signal of another life
or the reminder of anything
except her call: still,
at this quiet point past midnight
the rain is the same rain
that fell so long ago, and the loon
says I’m seven years old again.

At the far ends of the lake
where no one lives or visits —
there are no roads to get there;
you take the watercourse way,
the quiet drip and drizzle
of oars, slight squeak of oarlock,
the bare feet can feel the cold water
move beneath the old wood boat.

At one end the lordly great blue herons
nest at the top of the white pine;
at the other end the loons,
just after daylight in cream-colored mist,
drifting with wails that begin as querulous,
rising then into the spheres in volume,
with lost or doomed angels imprisoned
within their breasts.

THE IDEA OF BALANCE IS TO BE FOUND IN HERONS AND LOONS, by JAMES HARRISON  

because you’ve got to
a desperate solution
that was imperfect

Adapted from the article, The Masters: A Gesundheit Unlike Any Other By Alan Blinder where writes:

Greg Norman, who spent 331 weeks as the world’s top-ranked player, recalled last month that he would load up on anti-allergy medicines. It was, he said, a desperate solution that was decidedly imperfect.

“That doesn’t really make you feel great either,” said Mr. Norman, who had three runner-up finishes at the Masters and twice won the British Open. “You do it because you’ve got to, really.

Moving to the south, no one told me.

Moving to the south, no one warned me.

Moving to the south, I had no idea.

Springtime came.

Springtime came and the air filled with green dust.

In my eyes.

In my throat.

In my nose.

On me.

On my car.

I have this strong memory of using my laptop with the window open to let in the warm spring air and watch in … horror … as the electro static nature of my monitor drew the dust out of the air to cover it surface.

I wiped and wiped and wiped and the screen got darker and darker.

This, I realized, is inside.

This, I realized is in my lungs.

Then I moved further south.

Atlanta is now ‘Up North’.

And the springtime pollen season lasts longer.

I can’t breathe.

My eyes itch.

I feel cruddy.

Which is appropriate as down here its called ‘The Low Country Crud.’

It’s a way of life.

Nobody told me.

boats nets lying off
off the sea-beach, quite still, boats
separate, row off

TWO boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still,
Ten fishermen waiting—they discover a thick school of moss-
bonkers—they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water,
The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to
the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers,
The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,
Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand ankle-
deep in the water, pois’d on strong legs,
The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them,
Strew’d on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the
water, the green-back’d spotted mossbonkers.

A Paumanok Picture by Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass (Boston, Thayer and Eldridge, 1860).

A Hilton Head Picture by Mike Hoffman