Belly down on the dock we watch
that other world: eelgrass
lulls and sweeps in the water, speckled
with minute mussels, barnacles
small as the white spots flecking
an inflamed throat, an empty shell
rolls down a rock, unprovoked. On the radio
the shorter tennis player battles it out
and wins; we’ve gotten taller,
the announcer says. Iodine-tinctured,
the sea lettuce waves, undulates,
betrays currents
like wind through a harbor town,
flapping bed sheets on a line, in the square
women in headscarves gather under cover
of dusk to talk,
they have their routines –
but that wasn’t to be my emphasis, at all
the garden above, and below water
~Talvikki Ansel, excerpted from ‘Visitors’ (2007)
photo: bright light and blue skies reflecting in a tide pool filled with sea lettuce and kelp among other local aquatic life, near Baranof Island from 2014.