, or we don’t talk to the ones
who
know and survive
It is past time
to call you back again
The old ones are dead
Like water bright
in the eye
The brush of memory is too wide
And the surface is shimmered and wrong
Long afternoons listening
to the old woman about
her old women
The algae of remembering obscures
Again and again.
Jessan Dunn (DeCredico) Otis © 1985
The long grass moves
The breeze blows
One opposite of the other
I know where that rabbit is and goes.
(c)2022
The first bird sings high
Sequins flicker in deep blue
I sit writing this
(c) 2021 – Jessan Dunn Otis, Writer
“Begin each day with gratitude – for your life, for the sun, for the rain, for your breath.
Begin each day with love – for your life, for the sun, for the rain, for your breath, for yourself, for each other.” @JessanDunnOtis 6.3.2020 (c)
Sailing With My Father
Historically a quiet man with an
extraordinarily dry wit
When sailing your quietude
became fierce, sailing on
the edge
The hand with a piece of shrapnel
from a war on the tiller, holding
steady
Face turned windward, eyes
noting obstacles, checking
cat tail direction
The rush of wind caught to
fill the sails
We were happy.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Dedicated, in Love and Memory, to my father, Mahlon Hendrickson Dunn, Jr., 1914-1992 / Until we meet again.
© Jessan Dunn Otis, August 6, 2018
Weeding With My Mother
I learned to weed a garden
squatting next to my mother
Once I began to learn what was wanted
and what was unwanted
The rest was easy
Bend down
Get my hands dirty
Smell the earth
Look carefully
Make clean spaces
Talk softly.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Dedicated with Love and Memory to Helen Constance Smith Dunn ~ 1912-1980 / Until we meet again.
© Jessan Dunn Otis, June 30, 2018
The beauty of this place
Sweet, salted sea air Pine and palm Sugar sand and St. George Island – sand dollar, shark tooth “TomTom, how you doin’?” “I’m doin’ alright.” Tillie Miller Bridge between here and Tiki – Plump, Gulf shrimp and Apalach oysters Hickory smoked chicken and ribs (no rub) and sunfried jellyfish
Seagulls Sea terns Great blue herons Dolphins spyhop and blow every now and then Distant light on Dog Island in a 2:20 AM blueblacknight
Sopchoppy Eastpoint Panacea Alligator Point
A few days back Julie and Artie left, again, having returned from leaving once before and we all walked this beach, beyond the pine tree point, further than any of us had gone before – sea-silvered driftwood, beheaded brown pelican in the brambles of sea grass and pine needles Warming sun Cool, hard-packed, low tide sugar sand under bare feet Sassy leaping pine-stained, sepia rivulets
The laughing gull has returned each morning, greeting and reclaiming its territory and, more than likely, calling out “Sea urchin!” to the others that, eventually, return — glide, drift, rise and drop, land Eat, stay — then, again, depart — leaving this length of calm, shallow bay to terns, herons and egrets to forage
The beauty of this place is as intricately delicate as the silent glideflight of eleven brown pelicans in singular formation, skimming the shallow wave crests – moving from east to west – becoming, eventually, a pulsing line disappearing into the horizon
The beauty of this place
The red smirch of Crystal hot sauce spilled at the edge of a previous high tide line, scattered with Apalachicola oyster shells from our early evening appetizers, has been consumed by the storm-driven, rough chop of last night’s rain, wind and the approaching full moon Wind out of the Southeast, breaking diagonal crests of gunmetal gray and the red buoy strains on its chains as the tide shifts and the channel churns
There is violence in the beauty of this place, too – ships lost, lives swallowed whole, coyotes grab dogs, alligators grab anything
Waves meet land and visibly reverberate back into water, again –
making unmaking remaking
A broken buoy drifts Freed until it’s caught on low tide sea grass before this tide turns The sun breaches darkening, layered afternoon storm clouds to the West, while brilliantly illuminating the etched, white sandbar over there
Burble of language bounces inside my ear – “Hey! How you doin’?” heard so often it becomes as familiar and unnoticed as the wave and the air and this light
The beauty of this place is as much a mystery to me as you
Bert and Kathy, Hattie and Zack – come and met and gone Orange and onion salad, frittatas made and shared Al and Sandy, Sharon and Larry, Scotty, Doug, Gen and Ted Sun-warmed, woman laughing with Pat — LaVerne with her easy, flashing Apalach smile Kim and Tony and oystering all Monday morning across from St. Vincent because the rip was too chopped
Three brilliant, crested egrets graze along this shore, dolphins pass and blow and continue on, as heedless of us as the swarm of terns that rise and twist and glide away to feed further down on this storm-tossed, driven gloss
WOYS, Oyster Radio, 100.5 FM, plays softly as the shrouded sun journeys further West The playful pinwheel whirls and chatters, stick jammed between the weathered 1st and 2nd boards of that well-worn picnic table Just outside this open window, burlap oyster bag flaps
Steelwater, forbidding wind along this coast of Carrabelle Another invisible finger whips this water, etching new (yet ancient) patterns
Tide turns, distant sandbar, barrier beach revealed Unseen fish school as flocks follow and feed, far off
Damp, salted air Thin, singular electric line that leads from shore to dock light Whisper of wave and wind
The beauty of this place
No matter where I go nor what I do, the beauty of this place will taste like home as salt is in my tears
The apparent void dissolved The horizon I can never reach will always draw me in, seeming to want to go further than my eye can see, when the greatest daring starts within
The beauty of this place…
~ ~ ~
Dedicated to: Suzanne Creamer, Stephine McDowell, Marlene Moore, Jennifer Moro, Albert Otis, Jennifer Pickett, C.J.(Joe)Pouncey, Sassy, Judi Rundel
~ ~ ~
HoHum RV Park/Carrabelle, Florida/January-February, 2004
(c)Jessan Dunn Otis / 2004-2017
Happy Birthday
Can you remember;
or, is it only a story
told and told until it becomes
what you believe is your reality
That day you mysteriously passed
from one realm into the next,
having floated in that seawomb
of oblivion
Yelping, speechless, totally dependent –
one year later a celebration of one year
passed; and, on and on until there are
no more
Some I’ve known have come and gone so fast
it took my breath away and, to this day,
their sudden loss is felt
Others stayed for many years, celebration
after celebration until, finally, all the
vital parts slowed down, faded, failing, slipping
into Rest
Loved short or long (some unknown, but
told of or heard on the evening news) It is
the way we all must go — from flesh to flesh
and dust to dust, we do not know the number
of our days
(In this dark, still night I think about these things)
The coming in
The going out
It is the Spirit that survives, lives on
Only for a moment or two (however short
or long that is) does Spirit take body and is
named
Happy Birthday
Birth Day
Birth
Day.
Jessan Dunn Otis | Writer 