ocean

Communion

She thinks of summer, the beach.  She remembers the full moon rising above the water and shining a path from horizon to sandy shore, like the deserted backroads of a lonely night.  She wonders if those drives are only memories of dreams, condensed into something far more infinite than the actual roads she may have once traveled.

Her boundaries seem to follow her everywhere.

She remembers sitting on the deck, looking up into all the places she will never visit in this body.  Her mind drifts with the rising and falling of dark waves.

What is never anyway to the ocean that rocks her, the heavens that reach out to her retrospectively from that vista imprinted on her mind?  It spirals her like a galaxy, coiling her longing into stars.

trails of sparkling dust–
secrets of ghost owls echo,
shadowing the moon

For earthweal, where Brendan has written about wild mind, the one that needs no device to set it free.

water and air

ocean riding sky–
waves rise untethered floating
entangled in clouds

For Ingrid’s concrete poetry prompt at dVerse. Like Ingrid, I’m usually abstract with my verse, so I’m not sure even this short verse meets the requirements. I didn’t use any of the forbidden words though.

The top collage was done for a collaboration with Marcy Erb in 2015. The beach sketch, which reminds me somewhat of those in my lost sketchbook from last summer, was done in 2016.

Souvenir

I could not
look at it from be
fore or aft
er, only
the angle of gone, dissolved,
empty, vanishing–

not just the
material thing
that had been
dispossessed,
but what it represented–
a piece of myself,

never to
be recovered–and
here I am
left watching,
clinging to impermanence
like water and wind

“The Kick-About prompt of souvenir seemed perfect: my daughter had given me a small sketchbook, and every day I sat on my beach chair with my feet in the waves doing a drawing, and then writing a haiku to accompany it.  The sketchbook would be my souvenir.

On the last day of my beach vacation the ocean was quite rough, due to Hurricane Henri passing by, so I sat far up on the sand, where only a small piece of a dying wave occasionally brushed my toes.  Holding my sketchbook up to let the watercolor pencil drawing dry I was suddenly totally upended by a rogue wave that covered me completely. I stood up, soaked, clutching my pencils in one hand, but watching my sketchbook being pulled under and out to sea. 

I will replay that image in my mind for a long time, maybe forever.

When I got home, I channeled my emotional turmoil into neocolors, drawing from memory the ocean that was now fixed in my mind.  The sketchbook drawings were so much more beautiful though.  At least that’s how I’ll always remember them.”

For dVerse, where Ingrid asks us to attempt “writing your way out of a place of pain“. I drew it first, then I wrote.

(re) corded

weaving light
waves that cross over
in curved lines,
waves that land
inside the pause of the edge,
waves that linger cusped–

a small piece
of time, and yet it
fills me up–
I balance,
holding on to tides synapsed
between spells and signs

Punu Ngura (Country with trees) 4, 2019 by Peter Mungkuri ...

Peter Mungkuri’s “Country with Trees”, above, is the current Kick-About prompt. The layering of the different elements got me thinking about an idea from Claudia McGill that I had copied and saved which I recently found when sorting out files.

She took a magazine and tore pages partially out to create a new layered collage-like image. I did not have any magazines with trees, but I have lots of surfing magazines I bought on eBay because they are full of images of sea and sky to use in collage. So I layered the ocean.

My poem is a shadorma quadrille for dVerse, using the word provided by Linda, linger.

shorebirds converge with the edge of the sea

moving the water
with my feet
I float on currents,
my shadow following
each intersection with light

not thinking
who or where
I am–
cocooned in myself
and threaded to the aliveness
of what passes me
passing

crossing waves tracks
of lines and circles
forming patterns–
greeting me meeting
myself, transiting

throwing time into the wind
and not waiting for it–
wandering
in place

Kim at dVerse asks us today to write a poem in the first person that compares some trait of ours with something animal. In addition, the title should be the animal thing,

the ancient shores of galaxies still call

printed geese 1s

I stand facing the ocean
tides of wing and air–
time fades into mystery,
emptied of illusions

sea sketch 2s

tides of wing and air
held in light–
emptied of illusions
I swim in dream languages

forms die s

held in light
horizon merges into skylandsea–
I swim in dream languages,
wordless songs that awaken stories

elaborate music s

 

horizon merges into skylandsea
consumed by rivers of stars–
wordless songs that awaken stories
mirrored in ethereal blue

ocean pencil drawing s

consumed by rivers of stars
time fades into mystery–
mirrored in ethereal blue
I stand facing the ocean

blue 2s

For earthweal, sacred (sea)scapes.  How many poems have I written about the sea?  As many as I have about birds and stars and moons.  This unrhymed pantoum contains lines from many of them.  The artwork is from my many previous ocean-themed posts as well.

Encompassed

shells of my mind s

The shells reminded her of the ocean—maps
conjuring places that she would never go–
the sky called her to sail, align with the gaps—

Her longing was fierce, vast, bottomless, with no
boundaries—she dreamed of journeys opening
new worlds that danced in amaranthine joy, flow

Echoing the trails of the stars, floating in
time with the waxing and waning of the moon,
returning to herself, circling, homecoming—

That other life was the one she wanted—strewn
in the shadows of voices calling her back
to the secrets stored inside that spiraled room

shells of my mind close up s

Frank Hubeny at dVerse gave us a difficult task–at least I found it difficult–writing tercets similar to those that were written by Dante for the Divine Comedy.  My rhythm is definitely off and more than one of my rhymes are slanted, but I did get the 11 syllables in each line.

The art has been recycled from 2015.

(more) blue

blue ocean grid s

we begin
 as vessels, empty,
all this space
waiting to
find the right oceans—ancient
echoes wandering–

 all-that-is
 transformed into an
azure song,
composed from
whispers of traces—spirals
mirroring the sea

Color BLock Blue Story by Beverly Dyer

A shadorma duo for Colleen’s #TankaTuesday poet’s choice of words.  The art inspiration is via Mish at dVerse, who introduced us to artist Beverly Dyer, and asked for an ekphrastic response to one of her paintings.  I chose her grid, “Blue Story”, above, and did my own grid to match with pieces of ocean and sky.

The poem was also inspired by Joni Mitchell.