High Watermark Salo[o]n: Cox's Watercraft

I could not even look at painted water
until I saw her Oregon Coast
unloaded there in the gutter
on Main Street. We were pulling
canvases out of a van, hauling
them to storefronts to showoff
what survived the flood. Her skipjack
was safe. Her sail-canoe calm: no
panic paddle, no human presence --
archetype at home alone on a misty
morning. And that other Old Town
waiting in marsh grass, ready
for me to relive late night paddles,
the moon lift drift as I watercolor.
Paintbrush dipped in a north lake
then taken into the unseeable
pigment on my palette then paper.
Stillness of surrender between
storms between one body of water
and the flow of another. Cool tones.