‘This is not New York’

was so surprised
in rush between breakfast
and boarding the Peapod for shore trip
to find in my pillbox this wasn’t Tuesday but Wednesday

when did I lose a day?

On Isle au Haut pier

I salute the shopkeeper for thanking
Justice Roberts for Obamacare
and explaining to him
why it was so important to her

to us

This month only, FREE! At Smashwords

Here’s your chance to get two of my most recent ebooks free, thanks to Smashword.com’s annual summer sales sweep.

Light Seed Truth is an original examination of ways we use metaphor to think about things that aren’t things or even energy – and that leads to many no-things that are intensely passionate for you or me or the people around us.

Also free this month is Trumpet of the Coming Storm,  a set of polemic poems I simply had to get off my chest.

In addition, I’m offering two other ebooks at half-price: Quaking Dover, a contrarian history of New England, and my playful Hamlet: A Village of Gargoyles poems collection.

To get you own copies, go to my Jnana Hodson author page at Smashwords.

A schooner is not a sloop, pay attention

A sloop has only one mast, for starters.

There’s a whole new vocabulary to learn.

It’s a way of looking through the eyes of others.

Those things on the ropes, er, lines are called baggy wrinkles. They protect the lines and sheets, i.e. sails, from harmful rubbing. That is, they’re a furry cover for rope sphering.

Deck prism is another term. It’s a small round window. Here’s how it looked from my bunk. Overhead, people were walking on it.

Hatch is the opening between the deck and the hold below. This one connects by a ladder (not stairs) to cabins (aka staterooms).

Another leads to the galley, which includes what others would call a kitchen.