The Sea by David Baker

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend December 2, 2016   The Sea   David Baker

urchins spread. They want enough room on the seabed, along the black basaltic jet of offshore reef, sun-pied, out-swept, or down along the darker overcrowded   urchin barrens, to quiver their hundred- plus spines and not encroach or be encroached or preyed upon, pulled, ripped apart by the  wolf eel, the next-to-deadliest lurking   shadow in these waters. Are more black than not, and move, when they move, "by means of tiny, transparent, adhesive tube feet" by the hundreds. Though they prefer to stay.   The barrens are their own creation. Such hunger, such efficient self-replication, they tend to nullify what other lives would abound in other seas. Black dandelions,   they're like a small explosion stilled; or like that red-bloomed scrub bush in the cactus gardens near our house, more scarlet than red, whose name we haven't learned, flaring at each   air-breath like hair, so soft yet erect in the afternoon burn like underwater shimmers of the urchins themselves, lit red. And red your foot—within a minute of   your step and cry—we tried to heal with cool seawater poured over; and scrubbed the four last snapped-off spines; then sat there on the shore.  Three boats went by. A yacht. The island   ferry hauling all the day's workers home. Then, come night, was that a liner or our local trash scow, far out, low-lit? You can see the phosphorescent wake five miles from space.            Copyright © 2016 David Baker. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "'The Sea' is part of an ongoing group of poems I am writing, year by year, during my visits with my partner to St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  It's a beautiful island, about two-thirds of which is protected natural space, and several of my St. John poems try to witness both the gorgeousness of the growing world as well as the human encroachment.  Among the bright yellow bananaquits and dense forests of tamarind, locust, white cedar, and palms, there are ancient petroglyphs by the Arawak Indians, the ruins of Dutch sugar plantations, and stark memories of colonial horrors that, in deep ways, are still alive. The poem—a little adventure in (imperfect) syllabics—tries to account for all kinds of encroachment, natural and human, and all kinds of lushness, predation, rot, and beauty." —David Baker   David Baker is the author of Scavenger Loop (W. W. Norton, 2015). He teaches at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, and is poetry editor of The Kenyon Review.   Photo credit: Ann Townsend  Poetry by Baker   Scavenger Loop (W. W. Norton, 2015)    "Lion Felling a Bull" by Robyn Schiff "A Jelly-Fish" by Marianne Moore "The Sea Is History" by Derek Walcott Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038