“It is easy to be a poet, / brim with transparent water.”

--Carolyn Kizer, ”In the First Stanza”

I dreamed of a poet who gave me a whale

that shadowed clear pools through the kelp-making shade.

When beached sea-foam dried on the rocks, it would sail

down currents that gathered to pool and cascade

with turbulent order.

She brims with transparent water,

as mother and poet and daughter.

The surface is broken and arching and full,

impelled by the passions of nation and woman.

The waves build and fall; the deep currents pull

toward rocky pools cupping the salt of the human.

The ocean she’s authored

brims, with transparent water,

for poet and mother and daughter.

From Calendars