LOST POEM FOUND I

Last August when my boyfriend and I moved, I lost two of my most valued journals, one of which had a great deal of poetry in it. Last night, Seamus found both of them in an unlikely place, his "empty" laptop box! I feel renewed.....

We searched for whales between shore
and the horizon, thinking shadowed swells
were humpbacks breaching.
The ocean teamed with life
below but we could not see more than

shadows,
shadows that were not whales,
waves,
waves tipped onto the shore,
boats,

a fishing boat that trolled between the jetty
and some unmarked outcrop,
leaving brief brown waves behind it.

The sound of this great ocean drone
drowns out the language beneath it,
a language we will never speak; language
transported on green sea ripples.

The Black Oystercatcher

Before today, they were invisible
and as black as your ink.
while you drew them
I looked in silence
at those birds up there on Pewetole island.

they dove in search of chitons,
in search of food from hard shells,
limpits, mussles and molusks,
they dove down from the island's
sitka spruce,
and made black ink.
you used it
to draw me, up there.