"Sea of Dreams" by Dee Rimbaud
Rosanne Wasserman
Spring at the Preserve: Two Versions1.
They always serve Cheez Doodles in the castle,
And apple juice-but sometimes it's been cider.
Green beach: the fish might be asleep, but the
Rocks by the jetty are spotted with gray sea lice, with signs of life,
And the algae dances, the kids dance up over the rocks, feet cold and salt.
We almost caught a yellow snapper!-anyway, something yellow
Snapped at the stick that we used for a fishing pole.
Prediction: in summer that follows this spring,
More people will talk to trees. Time will be fast and slow
At once. God will be hard to please.
2.They've always served Cheez Doodles in Gould Castle,
And apple juice; but once it was champagne.
He said, "The fish might be asleep," but the rocks by the jetty
Were spotted with gray sea-lice, with signs of life,
And the algae danced, the kids danced up over the rocks, feet cold as water,
Sweet with the portion of blood that isn't salt.
Something yellow snapped at the stick that served for a fishing pole.
On my bathrobe in heaven, then, this will be inscribed:
That on the first warm day of the year nineteen hundred and ninety-six,
The only warm day for some weeks to follow,
After dropping tape cassettes through a slot in the library window,
My five-and-a-half-year-old son and I spent the afternoon on a beach
In sun-warmed sand, in winter-chilly water,
Timeless in the North Atlantic spring.
Bio:
Rosanne Wasserman's three collections--Other Selves (Painted Leaf Press), No Archive on Earth (Gnosis) and The Lacemakers (Gnosis)--have been joined by Frequently Asked Questions, now in manuscript. Her poems have appeared widely in anthologies and journals, including twice in Best American Poetry series (Macmillan), selected by John Ashbery and by A. R. Ammons. She teaches at the United States Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point; lives in Hudson and Port Washington, New York, with her husband, Eugene Richie, and her son, Joseph; and runs the Groundwater Press, a nonprofit poetry publisher.
