Never Taking It For Granted

Thank you Poets & Writers Magazine for posting the announcement of my winning the 2014 Tusculum Review Prize for Poetry, judged by Jericho Brown, in your Recent Winners section. The winning poem, "The Timekeeper," is about drummers, drumming and how genuinely unfathomable the act of drumming is.

Hurrah!

You CAN find one lone, whole and perfect sand dollar, and bring it on home

Pacific Ocean, Northern Oregon Coast

12 Things I SUPREMELY LIKE about the Pacific Ocean:

1. It's so big, it says "Go feck yourselves" to all the continents.

2. It appears to enjoy moving.

3. It smells like messy plants.

4. There is no signage AT ALL posted in it, anywhere, like "Slow Down for Children," or "Carol's Massage," or "Vote for Glenden."

5. Oh my lord, we complain so much about nothing.

6. It, and 3 1/2 glorious hours made someone stop talking to me. Which was a very appreciated and friendly quiet.

7. It doesn't care one whit about MacArthur Grants.

8. It makes a non-stop noise that is irritating and comforting simultaneously.

9. If you see a slick, cute sea lion head bobbing 100 feet out in an ocean wave, that is a real sea lion. That is not a TV sea lion.

10. His dead buddy's carcass that washed up on the sand is not a TV carcass either. 

11. If you meet a surfer named Brian from Philadelphia, he'll talk to the both of you for twenty minutes, and be really nice about it, just standing there talking and measuring the waves with his eyes. While you poke your fingers into the wax on his surfboard, he won't chastise you and his eyes will stay almost Caribbean blue-colored.

12. You ask someone special what two things they like best about the Pacific Ocean, and they reply: "It's not a bully" and "You're consequential."