II

Blue Oceans, Bright Stars

On the sea, small beauties are exaggerated. An albatross riding on the air pressure born of collapsing wave crests, skimming the surface over and over for a catch. Or when somewhere between ship and horizon a white flash appears—the silver of a leaping fish or the crash of a diving shearwater, much as when in the Hudson Highlands, late in spring, white splashes of dogwood spark across distant landscapes of new green.