Closely Connected

Image of the Day:  The Nashua River in its deep Fall green skin. 


What I'm reading:  Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves, by James Nestor.  "Human blood has a chemical composition startlingly similar to seawater" and "...we're more closely connected to the ocean than most people would suspect" (6).


What I want to write:  poems with the following titles:  River Restless, River Running High, River in November's Death Light.


What I am writing: 


What I have been doing:  running alongside the river.


What I ate yesterday:  salad with grilled shrimp that tasted like dirt.  Not in a good way, either.


What I have this morning:  stomach ache.


What poem I am reading \ what poem you should be reading:




Dear Empire,
       


These are your jellyfish. They are the artist's obsession. The way their
forms are taken by tides. Pulled towards the shore or towards some
unknowing place. Our beaches are cursed by thousands of these little
ghosts.


Yet she fills her canvases with their clear and brilliant orbs. Occasional
tendrils seem to slide off the edge. Their little hidden fires. Their little
underneath parts papering the dark.


To have a mind as hers. To have an eye that understands the little
shocks beneath. To consider that these ghosts have such an edge. Such
a sting.






Oliver de la Paz