Tides!

Every day the sea

blue grey green lavender

pulls away leaving the harbour’s

dark-cobbled undercoat

slick and rutted and worm-riddled, the gulls

walk there among old whalebones, the white

spines of fish blink from the strandy stew

as the hours tick over; and then

far out the faint, sheer

line turns, rustling over the slack,

the outer bars, over the green-furred flats, over

the clam beds, slippery logs,

barnack-studded stones, dragging

the shining sheets forward, deepening,

pushing, wreathing together

wave and seaweed, their piled curvatures

spilling over themselves, lapping

blue grey green lavender, never

resting, not ever but fashioning shore,

continent, everything.

And here you may find me

on almost any morning

walking along the shore so

light-footed so casual.


~ Mary Oliver.












Artist Dee Nickerson
Text & image source: Snowwolfs Woodland Nook https://www.facebook.com/Snowwolfswoodlandnook/