Slip-sliding Away

Over the weekend, I heard this essay on Public Radio International's "Living On Earth". What beautiful poetry and imagery! I'll allow the author, Mark Seth Lender, to speak so you can discover what he is describing :) If you'd like to hear Mark reading his essay, you can listen here.

Slip-sliding Away

by Mark Seth Lender

On the far side of the pond, bubbles Braille the surface, cerulean blue, soft as morning stars. Half light, the air is still, the lilies rustle. Their posted buds stirred by a breeze of water sway like channel markers. There just off shore someone breaking fast, leisurely. Jaws worked in whisper, reaching across the silence there. Then rolls and dips and disappears.

A beaver lodge stands nearby, they built this pond, but that was no beaver. The texture of its fur, the shape and the way it moved. The smoothness of the dive and how the surface rose and closed—a navel of water and what it brings to mind. That surface, opaque as skin, blind to what lies beneath. Patience! Patience!

The crease of a wake, grainy light, the water speaks. A head appears, oiled, sleek, coat like silk all umber and burnt ochre. Whiskers, dark eyes, fearless that broad, boy cat face so close, and my heart leaps—I, too, am fearless, I am soaring. I see what I was sure I would never see again. And now again.

The river otter alone in having had his long look turns away. Now head, now back, now tail slipping beneath. Some yards off he reappears, looks again, dives again, resurfaces. This time he has a bullfrog. It dangles from his mouth as if forgotten. His gaze still fixed on me, more intense than curious as if he has as much to tell as to learn. For the last time he slides below leaving a silence so profound, neither speech nor written word can break it.

Mark Seth Lender is a self-taught writer and nature photographer. His syndicated column, Salt Marsh Diary, reaches 100,000 Connecticut households through newspapers and the publications of  various conservation organizations.