Like the Nunivak boy, stitched
roll-tight by a proud mother
into the cockpit of his hunting bark,
all sealskin and whalebone,
I am told that   
              before I can brace the swells
which have come a thousand miles to meet me
              before I can even launch or land,
              I must learn to idle
in what Inuit elders called the soup,
the liquid wilderness
brewed by the shore and its nearest wave,
last to feel the earth and give up shape.

Bow pointed fiercely into the break line,
              I must find the fluid switch
between headlong plow into the final spill
and full-out backstroke against the undertow,
              make short work of comings and goings,
until my body and its body are drunk
with the ways of swash and backwash,
              after long days of trial
              hardly paddling at all.

Here is the furious lull,
the simmering meal,
the endlessly rocking means to all ends,
where the current is lost
and the moon has let go of the tide.
              The ocean at samba,
              the surfs foam baton.
Let me stay here as long as I can.