Paul Fisher’s first book, Rumors of Shore, is the winner of the 2009 Blue Light Book Award, and is forthcoming in 2010. Recent poems appear in Cave Wall, the Centrifugal Eye, Disquieting Muses Quarterly Review, Kakalak 2009 Anthology of Carolina Poets, Organs of Vision and Speech Magazine, 2010 Poet’s Guide to New Hampshire, Slow Trains, Snow Monkey, Umbrella, Waccamaw, and various other publications. Paul is the recipient of an Individual Artist’s Fellowship in Poetry from the Oregon Arts Commission, and a graduate of the MFA program at New England College. He lives in the northwest corner of Washington State, near the Alaska Ferry System’s southern terminus, and cannot see Russia from his house.
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Sunk in a dream of water,
you can hold your breath
as long as you want,
or breathe as deep as you dare.
You’re amazed that white
light plumbs so far,
that candlefish halos orbit
auras of tangled hair.
You could float or fly,
but choose to walk
beyond undulating timberlines
of unkempt kelp.
There, among ghost coral’s
skeletal cells, you learn
how the sea transforms itself
into rain, into forest, into lovers,
into salt.