SUNDAY POETRY: "FLYING FISH"

  Sunday: The day to indulge a poetry addiction.

Flying Fish

by Carl Sandburg

I have lived in many half-worlds myself... and so I know you.

I leaned at a deck rail watching a monotonous sea, the same circling birds and the same plunge of furrows carved by the plowing keel.

I leaned so... and you fluttered struggling between two waves in the air now... and then under the water and out again... a fish... a bird... a fin thing... a wing thing.

Child of water, child of air, fin thing and wing thing... I have lived in many half-worlds myself... and so I know you.

Photograph of a flying gurnard by Elaine Duigenan

OUTTAKES: THE BACKSTORY

 
As usual in writing a book, a lot of good stuff ends up on the cutting room floor, so to speak. This outtake was hard to let go of, more so because I didn't write it:

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Dirge Without Music

THE LONG-DISTANCE WANDERINGS OF LEATHERBACKS

I'm on a leatherback sea turtle thread at the moment—not the sole focus of DEEP BLUE HOME... but recurring characters. I love their wanderings.

Seriously cool-beans stuff is coming out of satellite tagging of these awesome creatures. Check out the track maps at the Caribbean Conservation Corporation.

You can adopt a leatherback and help fund the conservation work. I just adopted the lovely Panamanian leatherback Naya.

From the CCC website:

"NAVIGATION: In the open ocean, sea turtles encounter strong currents; they have only modest vision, they can only raise their heads several inches out of the water, and there are often no visible landmarks. Even with these limitations, sea turtles regularly navigate long distances to find the same tiny stretch of nesting beach. How they do it is one of the greatest mysteries in the animal kingdom, and finding an answer has been the focus of generations of researchers. One promising new theory on how sea turtles navigate suggests that they can detect both the angle and intensity of the earth's magnetic field. Using these two characteristics, a sea turtle may be able to determine its latitude and longitude, enabling it to navigate virtually anywhere. Early experiments seem to prove that sea turtles have the ability to detect magnetic fields. Whether they actually use this ability to navigate is the next theory being investigated."

RANDOM EXCERPT FROM "DEEP BLUE HOME:" SEA TURTLES IN THE ICE REALM

"It's not surprising to see a leatherback up here
on the edge of the ice, since this is one of the most traveled
of all vertebrate species, perpetually on the move along
jellyfish highways between the tropics and the high latitudes."

DEEP BLUE HOME
-Chapter 14
The Distant Geography of Water

Photo courtesy COML.org

SWIMMING TOWARD THE LIGHT

The book is really on its way.













Working through copyediting,
proofreading, blurbing, printing,
and all the months of detail work
between typing The End
and appearing on the New Nonfiction rack.

Birth date 9 July 2010.

I'm starting to feel a flutter in my stomach.

COMING SOON!

A new book.
























A new blog.

One to elucidate the other.

Please check back.