SEA-SIGHT: DAY FIFTEEN
northward the vancouver island coastline in an effort to honour the landscape with poetry
the odd little peninsula with ucluelet on one end and tofino on the other is a brief stretch of coastline that nonetheless is adept with variation and profusion, so we take our time. starting the morning at brown’s beach, then work our way down about two-and-a-half kilometres to the rocky bluffs. with the lifted fog it’s astounding how much this sea differs from the one of yesterday, now hurrying and sapphire and glistening in the white soakings of foam. we set down towards the edge of the gleefully rising tide, me slipping and low in my shoes.
I am looking into the distance at something unbroken. upon arrival at the furthest point with my notebook, a tremendous wave comes in with enough force to knock me over, supine against the gritted rocks. in a brief, terrorizing sweep it drenches me entirely, laughing. it’s true that I don’t fear the sea, at least not actively in the way of its enormity, or its capacity, or its force, but I am chillingly, enduringly reminded of the water’s power, that it only sleeps a little while but is alive.
what is latent inside the sea is a creature for there is no code of conduct. the seemingly immovable ground is a mere island that the waters have let breathe for a moment.
with my legs shaking we leave the small southward town, the salt-stick pellucid on wrists and ankles, and move north to cox bay, a long clamouring stretch of sand that draws surfers in from all of everywhere. the waves are like none that we have seen before on this journey. spun-out, turbulent, heightened awnings of water that rush towards the shore. in these long strands of water I see it build upon the lattice of itself, almost as if stone that has been pressed for millennia. it is deliriously hot, and we stay awhile, spreading fabric down. L looks at the blue with measuring eyes, testing its temper. there are people sprinkled in the sand like errant rains, ranging in a staccato, immersive drift of human noise—small singings of young girls, concrete syllables of men in hordes, mothers placating babies. but it is all soothed by the percussive rhythm of waves, craving the shore like it knows something of thirst. I write poems in the tumult of crowd, poems perhaps for a chorus.
there are warning signs of riptides everywhere, and L sees a young, slender girl swirling in the violent streams, her father racing down to pull her out. when she walks back along the shore there is salt-glaze in her exhausted eyes, and she moves with no force in her. for what strength can the human body possibly evoke in itself, when up about-face, flush with a being whose enormous potency is demonstrated to us in nothing but a dance? her father holds her shoulders, his brow betraying what his face does not. how terrible it is to have a child, to see this child revoked into the chaos of the living world. were the presence of an arm around one’s shoulders always the endnote to the fact that we belong to those who love us.
the next stop is the most northward of this sliver of land, and we pull into the careful edges of the forest first. wild ferns, spinning branches, the strange shape of trees dressing themselves in the wet shadows of late afternoon. we tread through the path nestled into the green’s giving spaces, winding in the salt-stirred earth down to third beach. it is as perfect as places allowed for human trespasses can be, the whole mouth of the seascape at once painterly and resistant to the static compromises of image. the sea runs this hemline like the rapid stampings of children’s feet, transfigured by the long, joyous sun into an invitation.
entering the water, the cold pursues you with teeth. all there is to do is to dive immediately under awhile, flashingly obeying the nature of the sea to conquer, and then rise to the exhilaration of open air. everything tears at the edges of the body—the sun genuflecting off the poetry of the pacific-texture, the blinding gleam of brine gathering in the swells, the consummating gasps that erupt, the air ablaze in its absolute clarity. running back to shore the angled warmth of the now-late day covets at the whirls of droplets splayed against the skin. the days are so long in these soft june months, long enough to render the markings of time obsolete. I think of merwin: would I love it this way if this could last.
driving eastward in search for a bed, the mountains are captured for a minute in the duality of light and shadow, as the sun beats its tired course behind us. their gentle largesse demure as we spiral in these long, thin roads. eating french fries in the parking lot the day is swallowed in one long intake of breath—the sky ranges sudden in a garden of lavender and daffodil and early bougainvillea, colours escaping as if from a cage. the blackness of the swimming roads blare against the moon, varnished orange, lowly in the day-like sky. light which does not rest, and speaks in stories that range on fantasy. I keep turning to look at the tangerine hanging in the stippled weave of the mountains—this night. this loosened flame. we pass the broad trunk of a tree fallen, shattered to splinters on the asphalt, its carcass bewildered. such is how these days pass. with quiet moments of deep happiness, gentle companionship, long kinetic strides upon this topography that is at once wild and domestic and violent and tender.
