Poetry and Prose on VISIONS '13
These pages are designed to celebrate the beauty of the human spirit as expressed in the poetry and prose of water, the study of oceans, and the people who are fascinated with both. I hope they will capture the struggle, the mystery, and the exhilaration that are intrinsic to the expression of human creativity regardless of its form.
The poems collected here have been contributed over the course of several at-sea expeditions. I invite you to contribute to this section of the web site. Your contribution could be a favorite piece of prose--funny, sad, profound. It could be a poem, a sea chantey, a small image designed for incorporation into this web site. It need only be about the sea - or rivers, or streams or lakes - it may be something published, or personal, your own, or someone else's, and it need only celebrate the richness and complexity of the human fascination with “bodies’” of water (which I suppose includes each of us, since we are 98% H2O).
You may send your selections to me at jdelaney@uw.edu, or to Nancy Penrose (penrose@uw.edu).
John Delaney
Chief Scientist
Theater in the Round: Modern
If science is music, sea-going research is jazz. ...
Secrets of the Deep
This poem was written in 2005 and submitted by Camille Flourney during the VISIONS '05 e ...
Poetry of the Sea
Dedicated to Jack Dymond (1939-2003) ...
The Wide Ocean
Ocean, if you were to give, a measure, a ferment, a fruit of your gifts and destructions, into my hand, I would choose your fa ...
Poseidon At The Point Diner
His face looked like an old part of the expressway,
Worn to rolling pockmarked flatness;
His eyes were seams in the asphalt.
...
Once by the Pacific
The shattered water made a misty din. Great waves looked over others coming in, And thought of doing something to the shore ...
Ocean Lullaby Haiku
contributed by Jennie Mowatt ...
Ocean Haiku
contributed by Dana Africa to Enlighten'10 ...
NIGHT
The cold remote islands And the blue estuaries Where what breathes, breathes The restless wind of the inlets,
...My Sister of the Sea
She travels home over the waves calm or angry passage blue sky or grey it matters not she is at sea ...
Hail Holy Light (excerpt)
HAIL holy light, ofspring of Heav'n first-born, Or of th' Eternal Coeternal beam May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light,< ...
Fathom and League
Two miles down the sea floor is a skull, the wounded head of a monster - fractured, faulted... ...
It Is Born
Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying, everything is absorbed through weather and the sea... ...
Dover Beach
The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits... ...
My Heart Soars
The beauty of the trees, the softness of the air, the fragrance of the grass, speaks to me. ...
Moving Forward
The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
Trees and stones seem more like me each day.
...
El Gran Oceano
contributed by Margaret Leinen to VISIONS'05 ...
Bill of Lading
Esquimault Graving Yard. Immense placental Facility labors. Lubbers at loose ends until ...
Pax Geologica
Last night the world's rifts, the ridges that lie under the oceans, entered my dream, seams and wounds of creation that sprea ...