A Deepening Sea

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: Living with the sea and surf is every New Jerseyan's native inheritance. There's a scrim of winning, of life triumphant, that inheres to such wild and wetted borderlands between the ocean and the dunes that no temporary imposition of boardwalk, beach badge, or scootered police force can ever fully erase. Last year one of the big movies was The Martian, based on a sappy book and executed with boku budget and zero imagination. Their Martian was a man stranded...
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FROM THE INTRODUCTION:
Living with the sea and surf is every New Jerseyan's native inheritance. There's a scrim of winning, of life triumphant, that inheres to such wild and wetted borderlands between the ocean and the dunes that no temporary imposition of boardwalk, beach badge, or scootered police force can ever fully erase. Last year one of the big movies was The Martian, based on a sappy book and executed with boku budget and zero imagination. Their Martian was a man stranded on the red planet, its only inhabitant. Do you want to visit aliens? See a consciousness estranged from our fingers and lungs? Look no farther than under salt water. Here are animals and plants endowed with an elemental difference from our landbound neighbors.

Tidal Pool

Look into the tidal pool that stands so small,
Licked into existence by its ocean mother;
Look how sea and sky can stand together
In the salt circumference of its circle.

When at its edge and peering in, the dark
Feels absolute. But, with a little waiting there,
What was all sky or night begins to clear.
-Look, a starfish, beating like a heart!