A coming-of-age novella of the sea, Salt Wind depicts its young protagonist in his relationships, predicaments and actions in a maturation process over time. The setting of the novella is mainly the mid-twentieth century American Merchant Marine on both coasts with other stories extending out. The tale is told with a mixture of poetry, prose fragments and short fiction to create an artistic presentation that works to both evoke and provoke the reader's involvement in its dramatic tension and complexity.
Early sea-time is conjoined with Army boat-time in Korea, love story in Japan, further voyages, studies and struggles in philosophy, history, and religion, monastic time, marriage, divorce, new start, and final reflections.
The smell of sea mist and blood,
Of rusted chain and creosote,
Caught me up then in the salthunger
That leads out under the white wind
Where gulls twist over the heaving ocean--
Raging against the taught tines
Of rain that lean like ice
Against the sea's iron face.
White sea claws trailing red smoke
Rose furying in
To the belly of the night
While the he-hawing wind
Keened in my crouching ear
The steel0stiff dirge and sick song
"Of warm flowers on a green beach"
Where love ripens like rotting mangoes
In the coal shafts of light
That hang hard under the blue
Black sun of desire.
