Article

North of Kennebunkport

The breakers had dredged a trough along the water's edge, shelved stones, the way they shelve sand and a wader, stepping down, stumbles and sinks to his waist. Each stone was rolled round, colored eggshell, ebony or brick, white as bleached clam or pink quartz ribboned green. She hefted their palm-sized weights as she lay…

Gone

This black hole is empty not just of eyes, voice, hands, but of the least stirring in the air. It is a cave so dark and still there is not the slightest flutter of even one bat's wing.

Cumbrian Herd

They dally on succulent fields of ferment while days pitch away. Their jaws move in circles like a woman's seasoned fingers delving bins at a rummage sale—both know green's secret outposts in dark corners. And noses stroke the ground, hothouse breath coaxing tubers to curl up another year. They have the privilege of this valley….

River Trip

Riding down the shallow rocky Sheepscot the trick is to stay centered on the rubber raft. You have to watch out for crazy currents that will hang you up on hairy boulders. Falling off is not the problem— it's the getting back on with the rear end of the raft swinging away like a slippery…

Sounding

Already the leaden sky dissolves and changes into a red-orange plume on water— as if our low-gear motor mixes magnificent pigments that funnel in, then diffuse. And even though we home in on a pocket of river-must where the anchor will take hold, the sun in our wake, that leavening distance so slow in coming…

Islands Of Lunch

Red snapper with tabouli, I tucked the napkin into my drink. Smooching broke out at the next table. I am talking a luncheon language to a Lebonese architect posing as a recently divorced Finn in the Peachtree Center. Red snapper, until the species cannot afford summer vacations, lunching on the bottom, farming among the lower…

Introduction of Dolphins

Blue animal in a blue affluence, silver-blue ocean mammal pointing in a green-blue sea towards a thin sparkle, the far surf in the sun. You're one with an intimate language: the possible loneliness of no-one-to-talk-to. Swimming out, somersaulting in the salt, your destination: lone dolphin, X, meet fellow speaker, Y.