“A straw hat on, my eyes flushed, might I resemble the former
preacher who painted a pool table and then maimed himself?”
— Rush Rankin (Descanso Beach Club)

The seaweed bends with the ocean, a field of women
kneeling, then standing row upon row, as if to offer
a benediction to the shore. Already I forget I am
floating in this frigid Catalina water,
not some ghost surveying southern France—
nor an ominous crow or a half-mad painter
scanning a landscape after a pint of absinthe—
A boat circles above me, the black chain from its anchor
stretches like an umbilical cord to the blanched florets
of coral below. The motor hums. A large woman peers
over the side as I ascend, her distorted contours
growing in and out of focus—and I am free,
more so than Van Gogh waking in Saint Rémy,
a dark habit caressing his cheek.