Just Float

I am.

Waterlogged.

I cling to scratchy branches, seeping wounds in bark, splintered trunks, attempting to stay afloat. 

I thrash and gasp and scramble atop my unwilling (unneeded?) raft.

I was the one who cut down these trees.

I lose my grasp and go under time and again, fighting for breath, fighting for words, fighting to know Why. 

The river is winning. 

I kick my legs and flail my arms and add to the (self generated?) turbulence, white wash, din.

The sky is blue and calm above the chaos. 

There is water in my eyes and I look down, trying to find the stones in my path.

I don't see above.

When I decide to let go of these trees and float down this river, 

(surrender?)

I will see that infinite calm clearly.

I will see the land on either side.

I will swim to shore and set up my tent and roast a marshmallow (crispy burnt!) and smile.

I will wonder what all the fighting was for as I wring out my jeans, pull silvery fish from jacket pockets.

I will dance naked under the flickering stars, wet hair slithering down my back to remind me of the struggle (until the fight evaporates from my skull). 

I will lay with the water rushing by my toes, the land singing me to sleep.

The logs will keep moving until...(I stop cutting them down)

Sensing land and sea

Magnolias.
No...dogwood?
Wet earth.
Green... the smell of green.
The velvety dampness wraps it's heavy tendrils around me, filling my lungs with the (re)memory of land. Each breath intense and pungent, I wonder how I lived without these smells.
Winding up through the Savannah River after five days at sea, five days without land, without the stability of roots and a fixed sky.
On board the briny air fades into normal, the stink of diesel from the stern or passing container ships or the savory promise of dinner cooked on the diagonal breaking the monotony. The stale, sticky environment below decks, hatches dogged and salty, keeping out waves breaking over the bow, sea mist filtering in through the companionway, the sound of sea birds and mumbled speech on deck.
Keeping in exhaled thoughts, memories of uninterrupted sleep on a horizontal bunk, stomachs twisted and sore.
Where the olfactory ebbs, the auditory flows into the abandoned crevices. Every flap of sail, every halyard whapping vibration down the mast, every strained pitch of the pounding engine becomes an extension of the sailor's body, another corporal system to monitor and alter. For weeks or months to come on land I will jump out of bed if I hear the wind pick up outside, if I hear a truck diesel backfire, if rain threatens to pour through non-existent open hatches. I am positively on edge, in tune with nature and machine.

Up the river, past explosively lit power plants and massive container ships (two bells cap'n), past dredges and tugs, past nuns and cans lit in Christmas colors on a dark n' stormy (goslings rum) sort of night. The city of Savannah lures us with its loom, with the promise of calm water and rest. The muscle memory of the recent battery of 15-foot waves and seafoam spreading wind screaming across our eardrums shakes off our brains and bodies with each bend in the channel. By the time we are tied up on the dock I have forgotten about breathing deep in the dogwood and earth, my eyes and ears distracted by the quiet yet electric stimulation of the sleeping city.

Land and sea, sight and sound, ebb and flow.
Awake and awakening.
The smell of green is now too a memory.