On our recent sailing trip, we swam with the sea lions off their rocks in the Sea of Cortez. Friend Marc got scratched or bitten by a playful cub; same cub bit my flipper, just as my puppy Bruiser would have, when I used it to block his rocketing attack from below.
But my sister Pam Zino – nurse/writer/Neried at heart – was swarmed by the sea lions. She disappeared in a crush of them for a frightening moment. She handled them wonderfully and wrote a poem about that and more which she has given me permission to post here.
Without Even Closing My Eyes
I feel the world rocking.
A bright blue rocking
into sandy bights of red spine
rising from the Sea of Cortez.
Wind propelled, cradled by swell
the cat’s hulls cleave
the leeward sea of the red range.
Windward of the cliffs, the waves
pound rock jetties in their wake.
We forge a saltwater river in
a mangrove thicket to the far shore.
Beaks folded like bayonettes to their chest ,
Pelicans guard the way to a clear lagoon
braced by a warm wall of rock
from crashing sea.
Which, days on land, I still feel rocking me
as it rocked when I spotted sea lions cupped in its peaks.
“There! At one o’clock,” I yelled. “rising ‘fore the bow.”
We searched the waters. Was that one? More there?
Undulating crests dazzled with water and light
mirroring phantasmagoria, or actual sight?
Then suddenly their bray bounced off a long shelf
of jagged pinnacled rock
They cavorted, snout to snout, trumpeting at play
slapping flippers, rolling about, posing on steep inclines
smooth young pups yelping , huge bewhiskered elders bellowing
The island a riot of sound and form.
I dove into the sea.
Surfacing, a pup breached before me
Another lion torpedoed beneath
I donned snorkel and mask
had them in place, and just as I did
All sight was erased
By a swift silent eddy of lions inspecting me
They circled about
Prodding, nuzzling, brushing, gumming
Their current whirled in
an exquisite softness of water and flesh
an inquisitive stream of motion and press
And a worry of possible biting
- Of welcome to fighting -
Do nothing to disturb them, I thought
Make no sudden move causing fear
Be one with their curiosity
This is what you dove to be near.
Will one breach beneath me, I wondered
Will I be carried on a back?
As if divining my thoughts
a lion did just that
But instead of coming from beneath,
mounted me. I was underneath.
I could feel its length, feel its breadth
yet it was weightless:
a muscle of gently suspended flesh
The gesture so exhalted me
it broke my reverie. I called out
and the circle dispersed to the depths.
Yet still I feel their water rocking me
See the sea-furnaced igneous range
with sandstone surface gargoyled by wind
its coves of shelled beach
its sere of cactii - silent witness to blaze and gale
And still I feel the water rocking me
though now I hail so far from its reach.