I, going after treasures stored
In time’s alluvium, bring up gems
Not lost, as feared, but just ignored,
Being, far from past, the Future’s signs below.
A Moment by the Sea
One by one the gray-winged oblongs with lemon beaks
Lift on updrafts off the bay where wind knocks cliffs,
Then float, feint left, right, tilt wings, glide downwind,
Make their flight over privet, clumped pines, brambles,
While their wood-and-canvas cousins on the water below
Take the same hefting wind and zigzag seaward.
Sails like triangular mosaics stud the cobalt,
Scattered shards and flakes of blue and gold;
On the ocean’s edge, where sky and water fuse in haze,
The colored patches blur and disappear.
The jigsaw bay of marble is a puzzle piece
Inserted in the worn brown perforated coastal rock.
The water’s surface under wind’s lash knots and wrinkles
Like the cracked rock puckering the headlands.
Waves slap shorelines and scour rock pools;
They swallow distant outcrops and seethe on reefs;
Wind shears their wooly fleece.
Near land algae stain the sea floor green,
Gulls’ shadows brush the water’s skin,
Diving cormorants throw up nosegays of spray.
The garrulous wind cruising in the Norfolk pines
Murmurs to the sonorous waters the secrets of Creation.
Waves and trees converse. Sea and earth, bonded,
Hung by the Creator in the void, rejoice.
Reflections
Under the river shines a parallel world.
People on balconies in the water,
A voluble audience,
Stare up at people on balconies above them,
Actors on a stage;
Smiling yellow windows in the river
Wink at their twins smiling down at them;
Diners on the underwater terrace
Toast their fellow guests on the terrace above;
The concave bridge under water nearby
Welcomes its lover hanging in air—
Water admiring stone,
Mind remembering flesh;
Trees growing upside down in the river
Dream they’re standing upright on the grassy bank.
O mellow images, dream on:
Decorate recollection,
Summon merriment,
Echo laughter.
As night falls,
Go on gleaming like desire in lovers’ eyes.
Painted pictures,
You celebrate conviviality,
The water of life,
Without which we should shrivel.
You bind worlds:
Lives acted on the stage of years
And the memory of lives acted on the stage of years.
Do not cease to quicken our hearts
Shells
Let us give thanks for shells.
Patterned cabins of calcium
fashioned into shallow cusps
or turned as on a potter’s wheel
into hollowed humps and whorls and spiraled cones—
O shells, you are shields,
shelters for soft-fleshed creatures,
homes of lime for modest mollusks,
functional, calcareous,
as strong as castle walls,
ornate as palaces.
You are ears that hear the sea,
sieves that sift the waves,
caverns where the wash of vast waters
sounds and echoes.
You are voices through which ocean speaks,
ventriloquists through whom breaking combers murmur.
Your lumpy ellipses are like planetary orbits,
your whorls like spiral galaxies,
your parabolas parables.
On your curved contours mountains gleam;
aurora borealis shimmers on your surfaces;
you carry cosmic dust on your rounded backs,
dark blobs floating on the effulgence of stars.
Time too dwells in your intimate forms.
You sleep in the tide pools of faraway summers,
on the rocks and beaches of forgotten shores.
Clams tell of children with toy shovels
running up and down wet sand, squealing;
whelks summon memories of lonely coves
strewn with the flotsam of creation,
and a boy walking thoughtfully
where the toppled waves rush up the sand hissing
and form patterns of foam that vanish quickly
as the spent waves withdraw;
mussels, massed on rocks like supplicants,
their twin shells lifted heavenward in prayer,
evoke the heavy middle passage,
the untidy, confused, occasionally glorious struggle,
the sea’s batter, the sea’s gifts,
the momentous daily rhythm of the tides;
and snails, stuck on walls or inching ever so slowly,
call up lazy August afternoons
in the company of family and friends,
when camaraderie has given savor to life
and the sea and salt and sun have drowned
the sometimes scarcely bearable burden of being.
In you, shells, as I gaze on you,
all of reality assembles
and is concentrated in forms.
You are tangible objects,
smooth, rough, prickly, pointed,
delicious under my fingers,
present now to me in time, yet timeless.
You