In the Breath Between Islands 

A “tombolo” is a deposition landform of shell and rock that connects an island to a mainland. I learned this new-to-me term after beaching a kayak on one, exposed at low tide in the South Baranof Wilderness, a swath of protected coastal mountains and islands in the Tongass National Forest of Alaska.

Lucky enough to join the Sitka Ranger District as a resident poet on their summer monitoring expedition — this trip via sea kayak — I was immediately struck to see the long, glacially-carved inlets mediating the seemingly opposing forms of water and rock. So much pure kinetic energy in the in-and-exhale of tide: twice a day, at least in my imagination, a tombolo of shells, rocks, driftwood, and flotsam gets dismantled, scattered, and rebuilt. A handshake, of sorts. A truce spoken by water’s retreat and advance. 

After the trip, I gave myself the assignment of drafting poems that mirrored tidal echoing via subtle rhymes. The five “tombolo” poems that emerged remain a work in progress, as any chain of islands is. I’ve made and remade them, rearranging verbs and vowels, trying to get to a stable story, or assemblage of microstories, daily moments of camping, sleeping, and waking in a landscape defined by flux.

Maybe these poems are more “about” the words themselves and how they ring together or not, rather than a defineable narrative. I spent much of the expedition staring over the hull of a kayak, watching the bull kelp sigh, listening to pink salmon leap.

These poems are what comes from living, at least for a blink, in the breath between islands.

I

When we’re finally silent, the uncorked gulls
filter back 
down like specks 
of mica to a bottle’s floor– minerals 

lulled, with us, by the tide’s long inhale.
Hemmed and hawed 
like a drawstring, 
I could stare all dusk over this thin hull,
 
waiting for a name, some drunken word,
to resurface. 
Yellow curtains 
fin around the dark, almost speak, but blur. 

We paddled here to camp,
five odd burrs sowed under 
a hemlock’s ear. 
But how far is home? I ask, nosing up to shore.

II 

Later, I dream of urchin-divers. 
Seal-ish, they whisk 
up the kelp, masked 
black as a canopy, spooling and fibering 

the inlet’s light-woven roof where they dove.
Down in the other 
half, strung to air 
by noded ladders, open bellows 

of kelp-leaves heaved out, sighed. Where am I
kept lapping up 
to swish and gulp. 
At its highest mark, the tide belied
 
that dormer where old photos gather dust,
and reed blankets, 
bed-coils. I glanced 
after those fluent divers, and hushed.

III 

Dervish salmon– reverent stitchers– 
leap in darkness, splice 
water to moonlight. 
I trace tent shadows through the witching 

hours, holding my breath, to keep the home halo hovered 
close, to smother 
out the otherness, that bear-drone 

sinister as cedar rot. Now where we are
nudges its way 
into me like day 
break through hemlock, club moss, and the harbor
 
of these songs, rooting inward. The salmon
keep stirring still, 
cracking the fragile 
branch of inlet. They splash the light back on.

IV 

Bottled up the gully, incessant 
as revelers, 
fringe-beveled 
shield ferns bow in drafts, as if knee-bent. 

And the yellow cedars huff like a raft
of sea-otters. 
The mediator 
must be water, those lung-gray laughs 

of rain that flicker over each sundown.
And morning clouds 
they wake to, crowded 
heavy with speech, tendriled to the ground.
 
What am I saying? These words are flotsam,
tacking up 
like kelp bulbs 
on the fringe. This interior is mum.

V 

Under nettled gables, a humble leap
of light off 
a wave, a soft 
curl and quiet, gravel-sent greeting. 

Call it a handshake, little island 
made new again– 
Each day, terrain 
to hitch a boat, plant a foot, to stand.
 
Where Welcome gets spelled in wet crevices
of beach granite, 
the old bed split 
in two– I need to know this refuge is, 

half pearlskin and shell-glisten, half root-red,
soil-black. Need 
to know the tide 
leaves before breathing back. Flees us, wedded.