Want

It is our first full day together,

four of us, an uneasy alliance made

so hastily we don’t know

if all the gear will fit into our kayaks.

Departing late, in rain, we paddle

toward Skiff Passage, narrow

opening to the outer coast. We want

to paddle the passage on outgoing

tides as if down a river.

We want to feel the winds of wilderness

in the cells of our bodies,

covered as they are with wet

raingear and the thin membrane

of our pale dry skins. We want

passage. Passage

into another kind of life, one not

encumbered by the little dramas

we create to believe our lives

are worth something more than

every single breath.

 

But we are late, and miss high

tide. At first it flows our way,

our thin boats needing only a sliver

of clear water over which to pass.

Then one, and another, grounds

out on gravel and barnacle, so

we line our boats along the edge,

soft rain stippling water like a

childhood game of jacks, simple

as the life of a barnacle (float until

you find a place to attach. lie on

your back. kick food into your

mouth. close at low tide.) I watch

their feathery legs dance

and try not to step on them,

my rubber boots clambering

heavy-footed intruder.

 

A widening, a deepening,

water enough to glide through,

a circle of quiet, Middle Bay.

Midpoint between Sitka spruce

forests carpeted in moss so soft

we could sleep away our lives,

and sharp rock headlands tufted with

windthrown grasses, the outer coast,

fronting the wide open Gulf of Alaska,

long reach to mainland interrupted

only by a clutch of islands so devoid

of trees they are called the Barrens

yet thrum with seabirds and whales

and thick forests of bull kelp. This

is what we paddle toward, out

of the middle and into a passage

to the sea. We want to reach

the outer coast. We want the vast

to cleanse transgressions we carry

whether done by or against us,

the heavy burden of them

enough to sink a ship.

 

Wet cold, we stop, huddle

under the last large spruce

and sip hot soup. On the far shore,

a deer, wide ears turned

toward us, paces tideline,

dropping her head to graze. Then,

having picked up the scent

of the unknown, she begins

to trot. Behind her, movement

as if her shadow kept its own pace:

a fawn, so small and dark that it

shapeshifts into a current of energy

and when still, is gone. The doe leaps

a straight upward pronk that sails her

over beach ryegrass and into forest,

and the tiny energy follows like dust

at her feet. We want them to stay,

we want them to be unafraid,

we want to leap like that,

we want to belong.

 

Paddling hard against incoming

tide we long last reach the outer

coast, wideness of blue meeting blue

where sea otters live among bull kelp

so thick that long fronds wrap

around the paddle, pulling us back

as if to say we have forgotten

something, there is more we have not

seen. But time and tides urge us

onward, and our wants, fickle, shift,

shadows lengthen even in midsummer

enough to pull us toward the cabin,

where we will go inside,

where we will light the lamps

and fire up the woodstove,

where we will shed, and shed

each wet layer down

to our still-pale skin and stand

in that uneasy warmth

even as every pore opens

wide as a mouth to ask that we

step outside once more.