Anne Tammel - Poet - Speaker - Author of Fiction
Endless: A Literate Passion by Anne Tammel
Cover Art
by Eric Anfinson
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Amelia Earhart Drinks the Red Sea
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Amelia Earhart Drinks the Red Sea
At the Red Sea
she is
surprised
to
discover the sea
not at
all red
but
blue.
Not even remotely
crimson
as
she’s allowed herself to imagine. Not
like the
burning sun
she’s
spent years
attempting to
capture.
All night I dreamt of the sea
I dreamt of a place of wandering,
of someone like you,
wanting
a place like this
“Why would they call
it red if it’s blue.”
She sips palm wine
with Fred
at Massawa, the last stopping
point in
Africa.
“Israelites,” Fred
says, the
temperature of
that night air one-
hundred-and-six
degrees, “simply
called it
‘the sea.’”
“To others, it was the
‘Arabian Gulf.’
Since the sea itself
isn’t even red, some
say it
comes from a bad
translation of
‘Reed Sea,’
as in
the Bible.”
“At certain times,
some say
red
looking mountains near the shore--
seasonal
blooms near the surface--
give off
an illusion of red.
The final theory, of
course,
is red
simply refers to the south.”
She gazes toward that
blue-Red Sea,
watches the
hues of it shift
in the
last of the day
light,
says, “I was
expecting this all
to play out so
differently. I am
a different woman here--
there is a sudden need
to not
go back.”
She sips.
And yet
all I dreamt of last night
was the sea;
I
tasted that sea on my lips
in dreams,
I dreamt of tasting that
sea with you, your taste
intimate as that Red
Red Sea—not even red
like you,
but miles and
miles
of endless
blue
The sun dips behind
them. He
turns to
Amelia with knowing
eyes,
lifts his wine: “That
is
what
you’ve wanted?”
I dreamt
last night
of someone like you
of wanting you
wandering in red--
in a place like this
The bright morning
following the
blue of the Red sea,
she
needs to feel it for herself. Dip
her
toes into that water of
mystery,
know…
for
once…
the
truth.
She finds herself
reeling
with the
curiosity
of a
child. And in
native
grey skirt,
runs
alone
toward
that odd water’s edge. Laughs
at her
own reflection in the rippling
rim of
the world’s northern-
most
tropical sea, the sea
Herodotus in his
leniency
toward fairy tales called
the Southern Sea.
She dances in that early
blush.
Wonders
why
she’s waited
so
long
to
live…
Imagines herself
in a
streaming hot bath;
running
alongside
circles of
bright
red
fish.
All night
I dreamt
of you,
of only you
in that Red sea…
As she dances into the coral reef,
her
quiet is
broken in two.
And yet
all night
I
dreamt
of you
“Monsoons—”
He flags Amelia
with
both strong arms.
The sky, as she looks
up
does in
fact roll
toward
them
with a
dim new weight.
I
dreamt
of the sea.
And I dreamt
of you
all night--
In a way
I
became that sea--
swimming with you.
She looks down to her
dress
--now a weighted garb
that
harnesses
and
disquiets her.
She has been found
in her
most private
moment, of
discovering
exactly who
she is
becoming.
And yet
I
dreamt
all night
I drank that
Sea, I drank
you in it;
I
loved
you and
I loved
you and me
at that Red
Red Sea.
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