Following the Gulf Stream north

My husband had a chance to crew on a convoy of charter boats returning to Quebec from their 9 month long charter season out of Nassau last week and next. In the two weeks he has off of work he's able to go the legs from Nassau to West End, then is now on the four day trip to Beaufort, N.C. where he'll get off. Right now he's incommunicado out there riding the stream north, but a spot tracker on the boats tracks their location every ten minutes. Below is a snip of where they were as of about 7 15 this morning. You'll see a series of locations. Their present one is on top.



Besides fulfilling part of his long time dream to do some open water sailing, the experience of sailing with a bilingual crew (French/English) has been fun. He was able to call me from Nassau before leaving to fill me in briefly. He's sailed for years but not on a boat so well equipped or so yar.

Thanks to Audrey Nicholson, poet friend from Quebec, whose son captains one of the boats and whose brother owns ,I believe , three of them, the offer to do this first came to me after she read my book , Sea Trails. She didn't realize I have trouble navigating walks through the house these days so I asked if Steve might sign on. I may not be out there but I can travel vicariously with them and if that's the best I can get I'll take it.

I'm adding a few photos emailed from Audrey before they left Nassau. They can get an internet connection at dock, but not at sea.


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Some crew and family on the docks. Audrey is the only female crew sailing.


You can see my husband to the left in the aqua shirt in this one.




More partying at a popular Nassau bar. The guy in the white shirt is 'Norm, the storm', captain of RIO, the boat my husband's on.



Dinner in the cockpit with a few of the crew. They caught two big mahi mahi between Nassau and West End, so those went onto the grills for dinner.

TWO NEW PHOTOS ADDED BELOW:

My husband holding a mahimahi before it got eaten!



and....the wild ponies/horses on the barrier island across from Beaufort, N.C. This was all dunes with a few trees in 1977. We rowed over then and picnicked. Now you have to take a ferry over. The freedom of a visit has probably been abused over the years and this is for the protection of the horses.

Review of Sea Trails, my book from Lummox Press, by Sue Jackson!

Sue just wrote me that she had posted this. What a wonderful surprise! Thank you, Sue. A wonderful review.

Please read it at her blog HERE

Sea Trails is available through Lummox Press and Amazon. Would love if you read it, too!!

The Poetry Bomb Tour is in North Carolina. Go, S.A. Griffin!

S.A. on the go with THE BOMB
(Click to enlarge)


Helen Losse, editor of the Dead Mule, will be reading one of her poems and adding it to the bomb this Saturday night. She graciously offered to read one of mine. The following is the poem I sent her. Thank you, Helen. Thank you, S.A.

The Trombone Angels


The trombone angels have no teeth.
No ears.
Lips like a frozen kiss.
Their last dance was in the air,
ghost band hovering over the flames
at Auschwitz, Cambodia, Iraq.
Dressed in black raincoats,
they shuffle to fresh graveyards
and bone laden ditches,
feet cut and dirty.

What did they think
when they once flew,
ground rushing beneath them so fast?
Did they see gods reach
out to snatch soul from body
before flesh died?
Is that too much to believe?
Too much to hope for?

They blow a sweet tune
for those who no longer buy lies
from bible-rumped matrons
about lesser gods
for those not washed by Christ's blood
or chained to a catholic sainthood.
Those matrons claim we're all sinners.
They cast the first stones to prove it.

The wail of the trombones rises
as night tosses its net of stars.
A cock cries three times.
The silence from the graves is deafening.




(This was published in The Cliffs: Soundings)




Shot taken while the bomb was still being created.

Book Recommendation -Passenger Flight by Brian Campbell

Brian Campbell is a talented Canadian poet whose poetry I've had the pleasure of reading numerous times. He also is a songwriter, editor, translator, and teacher. I really enjoyed reading his latest collection out and would highly recommend Passenger Flight, a book of prose poems. Order it here at at AMAZON . This LINK gives you more detailed information about the book, including a review. Please take time to read it. The link opens in a separate window.

Below are two poems I especially like from the book.

(note: there is no line break in the first poem, but blogger.com insists on putting it there despite several efforts deleting, then recopying and pasting, to make it merge into one whole poem)



CLAIRE OBSCURE



All this shadow, shifting in nebulous darkness. I speak of you, pursing your lips to
kiss, making me step down into my body to experience the surprising pleasure. There is something in me that resists your affections. Something else that wants to blend, annihilate me, so that I urges into verb. Curious, this back and forth within my skin’s parenthesis. And now I see you there, the gentle slope of your shoulders, the scoop of your breasts. I will inevitably enter your softnesses, snuggle. Within me also, this describing self, this circumscribing self that stabs with a compass, etches circles, half-moons. Shouldn’t moon have an irregular plural, like mooni? Odd that one is an odd number. Even is so complacent in its evenness, it’s odd. But rounding again to a sensual knowing: there is something very conversational about blankets, the way they rumple and bunch and collapse, form hills and valleys with each toss and turn. And when you get up, the blanket slips away unveiling you, a statue, smooth, alabaster, yet soft in the lamplight. Your body eclipses the lamplight: penumbras slide about the room. All this play of light and shadow. Now. And thousands of years ago, in a cave.





FISHY

The poetry editor of a magazine to which I had recently submitted sent me an e-mail asking permission not to print my poems, but to kindly let him grind them up into fish food. "In our aquarium," he explained, "we have several exotic fish, and we are of the opinion that your poems, ground up, would make an ideal nutrient for them." "Will you eventually publish them?" I wrote back. "No, we're afraid your poems, however worthy they may be, do not meet our editorial needs at this time." "Will I be able to publish them elsewhere?" was my next question. "Only," he replied, "if the publisher agrees to print them with this credit underneath: —Originally ground up as fish food for The Barracuda Review. However," he added, "we also think that your poems, grated, might serve as an excellent condiment for Italian food. If you agree, we'll try them on our Fettuccini Alfredo tonight." Reflecting on this, I realized it's true: poems don't have to be read to be appreciated. So I accepted his offer, although not without feelings of regret and chagrin.


See Brian's blog at briancampbell.blogspot.com

(Brian and I share the same last names, but we're not related)