Walking around Guemes - Andrew Durham

            I

I was free climbing, stupidity in the name of fun

The suction of my fear holds me, a barnacle on this cliff.

Stuck until gravity pulls me down like a gull dropping a shell.

I look up from where I fell bruised and bloodied

Amazed the oyster of my guts has stayed safe in my body’s shell

 

Shouting my resolve at the cliffs stony silence.

Continuing my scramble till I reach ground that will not throw me

Shedding shoes, my feet joining the sea as I cross to the next beach

My feet pick through the barnacles, sparring the for their sake and mine

 

The deer’s seeing me caused me to feel her

Not the other way around

She seems something from when animals were people

Wiser and more magical then me

 

When that deer escaped so gracefully around that cliff

She seemed a vehicle of fate, a sign sliding a cross the rock face

I am compelled to follow seeing a prophecy of guaranteed success.

When it is only a black-tailed doe fleeing

 

Still thinking myself a nimble shellfish I traverse the next cliff

But feeling the fresh blood on my hand soon turns me back

This time I’ll take off my clothes to hold overhead and dry

Soon to plunge naked in the water as to more wholly imitate the deer

 

                                    II

Something, my nakedness or their laughter, creates

The sudden realization, I am not alone,

The deer is gone and the crowd stares.

I get in the water and humbly give them the finger

 

I make the half waypoint until I the cold cuts in to me.

With every wave I think the sea will lay fingers on my possessions

And worst the sight next cliff so long and unforgiving.

That site kills the intoxication of adventure and I turn round

 

Waiting, stuck like the beached thing but feel much stranger

Hoping a path will open with the falling of the tide

So I can fallow nature’s contour

Instead of attempting conquest in my pride

 

   III

As I wait on the ferry I duck in to the islands store

Buying pop and soda at nine a.m. is funny in its own right

But the clerk is laughing too hard for such a little irony

He is one of the observers from the day before.

The island is a trickster that way.