Charles Schubert
Promise
Boats pace their slips like nervous thoroughbreds.
There’s light traffic on the bay, fishermen
move in and out through the morning’s diesel
haze. I watch the breakwater for a dead seal
lying in the cove a week now.
Shifted by tides, pecked at from mouths
above and below. Her platinum fur
has finally gone down
to the sand, where her mysteries are studied
by a multitude of claws. I miss her company
this morning. We would listen to the music of
metal rings against their masts, temple
bells calling each breath. She lolled
in the waves, peering through clouds
of plankton. When beds of algae brought
her close, I stare down with her, to glimpse
another life tucked within this one,
Each series of ebbs and retreats
washed over the old wall, rocks
cold and wet, slippery to their edges.
Bio:
Charles Schubert is a high school teacher who lives in Salinas and who has lived in either Monterey or Salinas for the past six years. On the weekends he works in a Monterey Dive Shop, and give guided SCUBA tours. "Promise" is forthcoming in The Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets.
