Poem for Saturday

A Few Lines from Rehoboth Beach
By Fleda Brown

Dear friend, you were right: the smell of fish and foam
and algae makes one green smell together. It clears
my head. It empties me enough to fit down in my own

skin for a while, singleminded as a surfer. The first
day here, there was nobody, from one distance
to the other. Rain rose from the waves like steam,

dark lifted off the dark. All I could think of
were hymns, all I knew the words to: the oldest
motions tuning up in me. There was a horseshoe crab

shell, a translucent egg sack, a log of a tired jetty,
and another, and another. I walked miles, holding
my suffering deeply and courteously, as if I were holding

a package for somebody else who would come back
like sunlight. In the morning, the boardwalk opened
wide and white with sun, gulls on one leg in the slicks.

Cold waves, cold air, and people out in heavy coats,
arm in arm along the sheen of waves. A single boy
in shorts rode his skimboard out thigh-high, making

intricate moves across the March ice-water. I thought
he must be painfully cold, but, I hear you say, he had
all the world emptied, to practice his smooth stand

--------

We're staying in Bethany, not Rehoboth, but since we will certainly go to Rehoboth for Nic-O-Bolis and The Sea Shell Shop, it seemed appropriate anyway. I have just discovered that the Kalmar Nyckel is in Cambridge, just south of St. Michaels, this weekend so we will be stopping there on the way to Delaware, visiting the maritime museum as well. We are also hoping to get to Assateague National Seashore (where the wild ponies are), Fenwick Island (which has a shipwreck museum, a historic lighthouse and Viking Mini Golf), and Lewes (which has a maritime museum, a wildlife refuge and my cousins staying there).

Friday, needless to say, was about laundry and reviewing. Every week my love for original Trek gets revived a bit more. I am really sorry but I did not make a dent in any LJ comments, and I suspect it will be a week before I do so. (, that Butler article is credited to Movieline, but without a date of publication I can't find the original...I do have that magazine going back years in a box in the basement though.) Am having a small problem with certain characters trying to narrate porn in my head when I need to do other things but am hoping they will cooperate and wait till I have time to write. So have a lovely Saturday, and if I can't get online at all, a great week, though I am hoping to be able to pop on at some point and post some photos!


A pair of late crabs washed up on the shore of the Chesapeake near Calvert Cliffs.


A Bay jellyfish. This is not a photo of an aquarium but outdoors by the docks near the marine museum; the oiliness is from the boats there.


A colony of fiddler crabs poke out of their holes to see what's going on.


Ducks in College Creek in Annapolis.


And speaking of the Chesapeake Bay, a Smithsonian diorama of the Siege of Yorktown, complete with little ships and cannons.