The Sunlit Zone

by Lisa Jacobson

  Hear voices from the pier rise up

  and peak in a distant symphony.

  See Jack and Cello pointing out

  to sea. I scan the surface till I find

  the pod of whales, fifty at least,

  which breach in the ocean’s nursery

  and, shadow-sliding, skim beneath.

  Everything flows. The world is fluid

  and sunlit. Jack waves to me, a slight

  figure that separates from the group

  then rejoins it. I stand, walk back

  along the rock before the tide rises

  and covers it.

  Sources for the epigraphs

  Part 1 Henry Thoreau. Journal entry. 21 Feb. 1855. The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau. Eds. Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen.Vol. 7.6. Boston: Haughton Mifflin, 1906.

  Part 2 Mary Oliver. “Wild Geese.” Dreamwork. New York:Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986: 14.

  Part 3 Dorothy Hewett. Wildcard: An Autobiography 1923-1958.London: Virago, 1990: 1.

  Part 4 Winifred Snow. Wooden Boats in the Big City. Melbourne:Southbank UP, 2007: 74.

  Part 5 Alfred Lord Tennyson. “Ulysses.” Selected Poems. Ed.Norman Page. 1842. London: Routledge, 1995: lines 18-20.

  Part 6 Carol Frost. “Away.” Pure. Chicago: Northwestern UP,1994: 63.

  Part 7 Rainer Maria Rilke. “God speaks to each of us as he makes us” Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God. 1941. Trans. AnitaBarrows and Joanna Macy. New York: Riverhead, 1996: 88.

  Part 8 Matthew Arnold. “Dover Beach.” Selected Poems. Ed. IanHamilton. 1867. London: Bloomsbury, 1993: lines 1-3.

  Part 9 James Russell Lowell. “Columbus.” 1848. The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell. Ed. Horace E. Scudder. Cambridge: Kessinger, 2005: line 56.

  Part 10 T.S. Eliot. “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.” Selected Poems. 1954. London: Faber & Faber, 1961: lines 129-31.

  Part 11 Rainer Maria Rilke. Duino Elegies. 1931. Trans. DavidYoung. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978: 27.

  Part 12 Mary Oliver. “Flare.” The Leaf and the Cloud: A Poem,Cambridge, M.A.: Capo/Perseus Books, 2000: 6.

  Part 13 William Wordsworth. “Ode: Intimations of Immortalityfrom Recollections of Early Childhood.” 1807. Selected Poems. Ed. John O’Hayden. London: Penguin, 1994. 60-62.

  Part 14 Albert Einstein. “Science, Philosophy, and Religion: A Symposium.” The Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life. New York, 1941.

  Part 15 Romans 8:1. Holy Bible. New International Version.Colorado: International Bible Society, 1973.

  Part 16 Mary Oliver. “Flare.” The Leaf and the Cloud: A Poem. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo/Perseus Books, 2000: 6.

  Part 17 T.S. Eliot. “Little Gidding.” Four Quartets. 1944. London:Faber & Faber, 1959: lines 239-42.