Water Language

Poems

Peter W. Gorham

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781725288980
  9781725288997
• eBook ISBN:
  9781725289000
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Religious Poetry
• Index: Literature

In Water Language Peter Gorham links together a diverse set of poems exploring history, mythology, diverse locales including Hawai'i and Antarctica, and the inner landscape of the self. These short works are framed and infused with the sounds and images of water--ocean, rain, river, ice, and stream--flowing through them or just beneath their surface. They take us through the pain of loss, the mystery of joy, and ultimately the hope of a higher love and power that governs our lives. Water language is the language of our own bodies and souls, which speaks within us before the words take shape in our mouths. The author, professor of physics by vocation, and a sailor and surfer by passion, forges together a strange alloy of language and imagery that draws us in, surprises, convicts, and rewards us with the sense that our lives are not forgotten by the God who is there.

Galleon

Three months out from Manila

Scurvy creeping on aboard like poison fog

Prayers and rosaries worn down among salt-dried fingertips

One sailor’s childhood wounds resurge

And bleed ragged like new again. There will be more.

A storm, boiling down from the undiscovered Alaskan

Gulf, frays every will’s fiber until the strands are torn

And hope curls into a fetal ball. What porcelain, what spice,

What silk is worth those bodies sliding into the deep

Sewn into sailcloth, but now perhaps

Finding some kind of peace in the cool silence there.

One day those gray false lines of landscape turn true

Punta Concepción rises dreamlike in the east.

Revived, those sailors still able to climb their rig

Are up in a moment and hope lifts every breast.

The coast is less a haven than a wall to guide

The wind and waves, and turning south

The ship, grown heavy of weeds and shell beneath

Still finds her steady way. New to the route

The captain stands in close when the light is good

But lifts her clear of danger to the west at night.

With five weeks of coastal rhythm, Acapulco begins

To seem possible again. Endless northwest winds and current

Have warmed their blood and bodies until the world seems

Gentle in its turning. But one day, as evening draws in

A blue haze to the east, the sailors are silent, ill at ease.

A gray line stands far off the starboard bow

Where nothing should be. They bear off to the west,

Climbing as high as the beaten sails and foul bottom

Will allow. It will not be enough. Bahia Vizcaino

That ancient bay of whales and shoals, curls its eddies

Around them, slow and somber in the last embrace.

Embayed: in the sailors’ ancient tongue, empeñado. Their lives

Pawned away in the deep crescent of that bay, driven gently

But firmly, wearing back and forth, by morning all souls

Aboard now know the voyage will soon end.

Fear fingers its way under each one’s ribs, finding the space

It will choose when the time is come. In the distance

There is something white, a low murmur, rising slowly.

When it comes, the surf holds back a bit, and she settles

Stern-to o...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• O Lord Do I Lift Up My Soul
• Triple Rainbow, Hanalei Bay
• Arizona Memorial
• A Code
• Constellation
• Desert Rain
• Easter Dawn, Mt. Palomar, California
• Extinction
• For Silence
• Gale at dusk
• Honolua Bay
• ’Iwa
• Alexander and Boukephalos
• Erebus and Terror: Ross Island, Antarctica
• Kiawe on Moloka’i
• King Solomon’s Wings
• Mānoa Stream
• Swimming in Sea Caves, Kona Coast
• Mermaid Song
• Moonstone
• New Growth on the Edge of an LA Sidewalk
• A Conversation with the Sky
• Curvature
• November Lines
• On Finding Indian Grindstones in the Forest
• On the Beach at Los Gatos
• A Dirge for Two Children, Fallen Through Ice
• Galleon
• Peregrine Falcon
• Riding at Anchor: Kaneohe Bay
• Self Portrait in Fractals
• Song for Night
• The Moon Part
• Song for the Sea God
• The Albatross
• The First Voyage
• The Leaf People
• The Ocean is a Fire
• Columbus and the Arawaks
• Three Stones
• The Dolphins
• To a Friend I Have Wronged
• Manu O Kū
• Whale Song
• Window Seat over the High Sierra
• Washington
• Hope
• Notes
• Acknowledgements