It Doesn't Matter What the World Wants

I've decided to post the occasional new poem that I think might be of interest. "Harbour Seals at Cape Enrage" is from my next book, It Doesn't Matter what the World Wants (forthcoming from Gaspereau Press). I was influenced by the Sufi poet Rumi. I spent a summer a few years ago reading a Rumi poem in Coleman Barks' translation first thing when I got up in the morning. My back door is surrounded by wild red roses, and the scent of the roses seemed to be part of the poems. All I remember is a summer of roses opening and Rumi poems.

Cape Enrage is a wonderful high jut of land on the Bay of Fundy about 10 miles from where I live. One afternoon I looked down over the cliff and saw several harbour seals, hence the title.

HARBOUR SEALS AT CAPE ENRAGE

It doesn't matter what the world wants.
The whales breach with their shining flippers
and seeds float hundreds of miles
across the waves.

The ocean of ecstatic love is inside us.
Waves break there, and all our losses
and dreams. We dream on.
We wake, we love, and every

moment that we've lived rings true.
The ballast of our days lightens.
Something inside us loves the ocean,
the waves, the seal's black nose above the water.

(Copyright Allan Cooper, 2006)