Seated, feet against thwarts, the rower pulls.
Her oar blades push ocean and she is surprised
at how minor motions move her
and dimple the mirroring surface.
The swirling wounds get smaller, heal over,
but she likens herself to the rusting wreck
whose barely buried errors come and go
from sight with the tides.
Rounding the wreck and the rocks
she finds herself in green shallows
between treed islands.
Rockweed fronds brush the hull.
Tall cool and mossy rocks
talk in ripples and eagles,
light shafts and cedar scent.
Insistence of awe.
When she resumes now
it’s from hinge of hips, reach of ribs,
levered moves and curve of hull
held by the whole of the sea.
A distant engine hum and winch whine
chord with osprey screech and crow.
Algae and oil shimmy at current’s pace
and the rower gets smaller.
—
Jeanne L. Bamforth has had poems published in Balancing Act 2, an Anthology of Poems by Maine Women (Littoral Books), Northern New England Review, and Stone Poetry Quarterly, and accepted by Willows Wept Review and the Philly Poetry Chapbook Review. She lives and writes on Merrymeeting Bay, an inland confluence of six rivers near the coast of Maine.
