Poem post: "Sea Legs" by Charmaine Cadeau

[radiantfracture]

Today as a writing prompt, I pulled a book more or less at random from my "I don't know where to put these / maybe get rid of this" shelf; oddly, the section I took it from is the "things written by me and people I know" section, even though I don't know this poet at all.

The chapbook is Placeholder by Charmaine Cadeau. I don't recall anything about where I got this book. I could've found it in a little library; it has the slightly stained and beaten look look of something left outside, although inside it's in pretty good shape, except for some slightly water-rippled pages, which might be my more recent fault. Anyway I opened to the first poem, and liked it a lot, which is not at all a given for me. So here it is.

"Sea Legs" - Charmaine Cadeau

Doesn't mean standing where the ocean once
smacked, dirt shells under your feet. In Wisconsin,
jellyfish fossils billow like nighties
turned to emery, another take on Lot's wife. But over here, just sand,
inlaid sand once beach and the feeling of being outlaw, outlier.

Means after being on the water, fluid in the inner ear
copies the boat's aggressive curtsies,
cochlea remembering itself as nautilus. That when back
ashore, the land sways. A nonchalant gravity,
one that threatens to carry you off.

* * * * * *

I don't think I have any elaborate commentary for this one. On first read, I just happily collected the language and imagery -- "ocean...smacked", "the boat's aggressive curtsies", "cochlea remembering itself as nautilus" (!!!). I noted the unease of "outlaw, outlier," and the fossils. The great descriptions of the feeling of imbalance from returning to land -- "a nonchalant gravity / one that threatens to carry you off."

Reading the poem out to post it here, I notice the contrast being carefully built: two stanzas of roughly the same size, considering what the title "Sea Legs" doesn't mean and then what it does mean. It doesn't mean standing on a place where an ocean was (the past); it does mean being destabilized by adapting to a new circumstance and then returning to the old -- "getting your sea legs" usually means the experience of finding your footing at sea, getting used to moving through instability.

So there is something here about a connection to the deep past, the jellyfish fossils and the cochlea remembering itself as nautilus, and then a more recent past, the destabilization of having adapted to one circumstance and then having it change again. And the danger of looking back, too -- Lot's wife, maybe the thread of being carried off.

So you can't rest on the past and the assumptions of the past -- it will just destabilize you in the present? Something like that.

Also really interesting imagery with old-fashioned gender markers: the nighties, the emery, Lot's wife, curtseys.

(There are some interpretations I could put on this based on later poems in the collection, but I think I will let it stand alone for the moment.)

What do you notice?

{rf}