We interrupt our regularly scheduled program

to bring you this: a poem by Elizabeth Bishop. At present, we are sitting in our cottage, surrounded by felled trees from this morning's 60-mph winds. With TreeMasters on the way, and electricity on the blink, we're daydreaming of warmer climes and subtropical scenes, like the one in this lovely poem about The Keys, one of my favorite erstwhile escapes. For the faithful among you, this is the poem referenced in the last entry. It only seemed right to give it full presence, having invoked its spirit in the first place. Plus, for the sensualists among you, reading these descriptions should have the same effect as eating something incomparably delicious that explodes with layers of flavors, both subtle and stunning, on the palate. It's not food, but I devour it just the same way. For best enjoyment, read aloud and savor EB's effortless rhyme and metre.

Pleasure Seas

In the walled off swimming-pool the water is perfectly flat.
The pink Seurat bathers are dipping themselves in and out
Through a pane of bluish glass.
The cloud reflections pass
Huge amoeba-motions directly through
The beds of bathing caps: white, lavender and blue.
If the sky turns gray, the water turns opaque,
Pistachio green and Mermaid Milk.
But out among the keys
Where the water goes its own way, the shallow pleasure seas
Drift this way and that mingling currents and tides
In most of the colors that swarm around the sides
Of soap-bubbles, poisonous and fabulous.
And the keys float lightly like rolls of green dust.
From an airplane the water's heavy sheet
Of glass above a bas-relief:
Clay-yellow coral and purple dulces
And long, leaning, submerged green grass.
Across it a wide shadow pulses.
The water is a burning glass
Turned to the sun
That blues and cools as the afternoon wears on,
And liquidly
Floats weeds, surrounds fish, supports a violently red bell-buoy
Whose neon-color vibrates over it, whose bells vibrate
Through it. It glitters rhythmically
To shock after shock of electricity.
The sea is delight. The sea means room.
It is a dance floor, a well ventilated ballroom.
From the swimming-pool or from the deck of ship
Pleasures strike off humming, and skip
Over the tinsel surface: a Grief floats off
Spreading out thin like oil. And Love
Sets out determinedly in a straight line,
One of his burning ideas in mind,
Keeping his eyes on
The bright horizon,
but shatters immediately, suffers refraction,
And comes back in shoals of distraction.
Happy the people in the swimming-pool and on the yacht,
Happy the man in that airplane, likely as not–
And out there where the coral reef is a shelf
The water runs at it, leaps throws itself
Lightly, lightly, whitening in the air:
An acre of cold white spray is there
Dancing happily by itself.

(1939)