I've taught so little that the experience is still
very fresh for me.
And when I taught in a high school--
I did a one week workshop in Portland in November,
I had a student who timidly handed me
four lines about the ocean, and for once, I
had nothing good to say.
And he never showed me another thing.
During the entire workshop, I gave him some poems
by other people about the ocean, but it didn't
seem to cheer him up at all.
And wrote this poem about that--
"Sonnet for Joe."
"When I tell you I would rather you describe
a clock, than time, that the essence of your ocean
sentiments is not the ocean, I'm wondering
if you would live if your feet got tangled in seaweed.
Write me the superstructure of water,
and now you drop your face.
I see my mistake, you did not write to contend.
So it was the ocean in four dry lines like seaweed
from Japanese groceries that thickens and plumps
when ladled in water.
Look, you don't even like it when I give you
some copies of ocean poems, you detest the sea,
and it's marketable herring.
It's common tuna and starfish always losing their legs.
Think of the man who fell off his fishing boat in the fog
off Alaska.
He heard the motor slowly dropping away,
its cargo a vain fish under its wing.
Think of his widow who detests the sea, who lives beside it,
who writes now to her friend."