Beach

A Day At Sea

As the ocean waves at me,
And the sand greets the sea,
The fish swim free,
And shells wash up by me.

The sand squishes suddenly,
Between my shoeless toes.
Then the tide flows over them,
And back down it goes.

The salt is on my tongue,
The sea’s song is sung,
The sun is going down,
And so my day at sea is done.

By Melissa Roberson

***

A Day At The Beach

The sun and sand go hand in hand.
The sound of constant waves –
There’s a smell of salt in the air.
The ocean is seen through a haze.

The parents bring their children
And watch them play in the sand.
They help them jump the waves
By holding little hands.

The teens exude vitality and youth.
They know they’re coming of age.
They strut and prance and dance around
As if they were on stage.

Lovers strolling hand in hand
Enjoy their day of sun and sand.
They seem to think they’re all alone –
The crowded beach on which they roam.

The old move slow and steady
Thinking it’s no notion.
This could be the last time
They get to see the ocean.

The seagulls glide in circles.
It seems without a care,
But really they are searching
A crumb to catch mid-air.

Scattered on the beach
Are castles made of sand.
Some are small and messy – 
Others big and grand.

If one is lucky,
While looking out to sea
They may spot some dolphins
Swimming gracefully.

A day at the beach is not complete
Without catching the perfect wave
Or gathering shells along the shore –
Souvenirs of a perfect day…

By Marie Matheny

***

A Day AT The Beach

Hot, soft sand under my feet
As I walk briskly into the crowded beach
Sea breeze presses on my bare skin
I start digging a hole and others join in

The wave seems beautiful as it gathers strength
But is crashes down on me like a white wash sumo
I crawl battered and tired from the swell
and paddle to calmer waters to relax and chill

I lie down silently on my board
looking up at the harsh sun
suddenly I’m feeling drowsy and slow
and gently close my eyes

By Declan McBride

***

A Few Lines from Rehoboth Beach

Dear friend, you were right: the smell of fish and foam

and algae makes one green smell together. It clears

my head. It empties me enough to fit down in my own

skin for a while, singleminded as a surfer. The first

day here, there was nobody, from one distance

to the other. Rain rose from the waves like steam,

dark lifted off the dark. All I could think of

were hymns, all I knew the words to: the oldest

motions tuning up in me. There was a horseshoe crab

shell, a translucent egg sack, a log of a tired jetty,

and another, and another. I walked miles, holding

my suffering deeply and courteously, as if I were holding

a package for somebody else who would come back

like sunlight. In the morning, the boardwalk opened

wide and white with sun, gulls on one leg in the slicks.

Cold waves, cold air, and people out in heavy coats,

arm in arm along the sheen of waves. A single boy

in shorts rode his skimboard out thigh-high, making

intricate moves across the March ice-water. I thought

he must be painfully cold, but, I hear you say, he had

all the world emptied, to practice his smooth stand.

By Fleda Brown

***

A Parable

Between the sandhills and the sea
A narrow strip of silver sand,
Whereon a little maid doth stand,
Who picks up shells continually,
Between the sandhills and the sea.

Far as her wondering eyes can reach,
A vastness heaving gray in gray
To the frayed edges of the day
Furls his red standard on the breach
Between the sky-line and the beach.

The waters of the flowing tide
Cast up the sea-pink shells and weed;
She toys with shells, and doth not heed
The ocean, which on every side
Is closing round her vast and wide.

It creeps her way as if in play,
Pink shells at her pink feet to cast;
But now the wild waves hold her fast,
And bear her off and melt away,
A vastness heaving gray in gray.

By Mathilde Blind

***

Beach Glass

While you walk the water’s edge,

turning over concepts

I can’t envision, the honking buoy

serves notice that at any time

the wind may change,

the reef-bell clatters

its treble monotone, deaf as Cassandra

to any note but warning. The ocean,

cumbered by no business more urgent

than keeping open old accounts

that never balanced,

goes on shuffling its millenniums

of quartz, granite, and basalt.

It behaves

toward the permutations of novelty–

driftwood and shipwreck, last night’s

beer cans, spilt oil, the coughed-up

residue of plastic–with random

impartiality, playing catch or tag

or touch-last like a terrier,

turning the same thing over and over,

over and over. For the ocean, nothing

is beneath consideration.

The houses

of so many mussels and periwinkles

have been abandoned here, it’s hopeless

to know which to salvage. Instead

I keep a lookout for beach glass–

amber of Budweiser, chrysoprase

of Almadén and Gallo, lapis

by way of (no getting around it,

I’m afraid) Phillips’

Milk of Magnesia, with now and then a rare

translucent turquoise or blurred amethyst

of no known origin.

The process

goes on forever: they came from sand,

they go back to gravel,

along with treasuries

of Murano, the buttressed

astonishments of Chartres,

which even now are readying

for being turned over and over as gravely

and gradually as an intellect

engaged in the hazardous

redefinition of structures

no one has yet looked at.

By Amy Clampitt 

***

Beach Reflections

sitting knees bent on sandy shore
eyes half closed, listening
steady approach of tides

now ease away

secretly taking my whispers
back to their watery depths

watching footprints fade
slowly, before my eyes
heaven’s magic show
awake the child inside

ocean rhythm breaking near
clearing my thoughts to a hush
crystal sound evaporating
leaving me suspended
somewhere between the warm

beating sand and your touch

by Sherry Anne 

***

By the Sea

On either hand
A sweep of tawny sand
With gentle curve extending, smooth and wide,
On which bold rocks look down
With dark and sullen frown,
Slopes out to meet the fast incoming tide.

The sunbeams leap
And frolic o’er the deep,
And where their light is most intensely pour’d,
Strike from its surface keen
Flashes of diamond sheen,
Dazzling the eyes that gaze out thitherward.

A cloud or two
Drifts lightly ‘mid the blue;
And, like a faint white blot upon the sky,
Up yonder you can trace
The day moon’s dim drowned face,
Whose light will flood all heaven by-and-by.

The rythmical
Hoarse sounds that rise and fall,
Thund’rous, upon the ear from out at sea,
The tumult nearer land,
And splash upon the sand
Of breaking waves, compose one harmony.

By Elsie Cooper

***

Don’T Go Far Off

Don’t go far off, not even for a day, because —
because — I don’t know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don’t leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don’t leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you’ll have gone so far
I’ll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

By Pablo Neruda

***

Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

By MATTHEW ARNOLD

***

Ebb Tide

When the long day goes by
And I do not see your face,
The old wild, restless sorrow
Steals from its hiding place.

My day is barren and broken,
Bereft of light and song,
A sea beach bleak and windy
That moans the whole day long.

To the empty beach at ebb tide,
Bare with its rocks and scars,
Come back like the sea with singing,
And light of a million stars.

By Sara Teasdale

***

Evening, Near the Sea

Light ebbs from off the Earth; the fields are strange,
Dark, trackless, tenantless; now the mute sky
Resigns itself to Night and Memory,
And no wind will yon sunken clouds derange,
No glory enrapture them; from cot or grange
The rare voice ceases; one long-breathed sigh,
And steeped in summer sleep the world must lie;
All things are acquiescing in the change.

Hush! while the vaulted hollow of the night
Deepens, what voice is this the sea sends forth,
Disconsolate iterance, a passionless moan?
Ah! now the Day is gone, and tyrannous Light,
And the calm presence of fruit-bearing Earth:
Cry, Sea! it is thy hour; thou art alone.

By Edward Dowden

***

Fragile

Falling asleep with the sound of beach waves,
The soothing noise as they crash on the shore,
Fading emptiness when they would engrave.
I still hear it when I open the door.

The freshness and saltiness of the breeze,
It is powerful and very peaceful,
The type of peace that brings me to my knees.
These waves understand me more than people.

Without waves, I float into dark abyss.
Nothing feels right anymore, I’m lonely.
Without all these ocean waves, I would miss.
Even when It’s cold here, I am cozy.

I’m at peace, I finally found meaning.
Waves carry me; they keep me from leaving.

By Callie Pedersen

***

Happy Dog

I’m a happy dog at the beach
If I had the power of speech
I would tell you all
To throw my ball
I’m a happy dog at the beach

I’m a happy dog at the beach
There are no new tricks you can teach
I’m bouncy and glad
And my tail wags like mad
I’m a happy dog at the beach

I’m a happy dog at the beach
My joy is always in reach
Whatever the talk
It’s the best place to walk
I’m a happy dog at the beach

I’m a happy dog at the beach
As I hear the seagulls screech
I chase and I bark
Long into the dark
I’m a happy dog at the beach

I’m a happy dog at the beach
And I don’t want to start to preach
But if you ask me
The best thing to see
Is a happy dog at the beach

By Flying Lemming

***

Later Life

Something this foggy day, a something which
Is neither of this fog nor of today,
Has set me dreaming of the winds that play
Past certain cliffs, along one certain beach,

And turn the topmost edge of waves to spray:
Ah pleasant pebbly strand so far away,
So out of reach while quite within my reach,
As out of reach as India or Cathay!

I am sick of where I am and where I am not,
I am sick of foresight and of memory,
I am sick of all I have and all I see,
I am sick of self, and there is nothing new;

Oh weary impatient patience of my lot!
Thus with myself: how fares it, Friends, with you?

By Christina Georgina Rossetti

***

Meadow and Sea

I watch the children play beside the sea
Upon an upland meadow lifted high,
The ocean large before them, wave and sky
A boundless panorama wild and free.
The clouds in floating companies agree.
White ships allure the fondly following eye,
And all the glowing prospect far or nigh

Is Nature’s meditative jubilee
And yet the children toss their little ball,
Shouting and rioting in heedless play,
Unmindful of the glory of it all,
Nor thinking once beyond their meadow gay.
Among the buttercups they leap and fall
The ocean wide before them—what care they?

By Amos Russel Wells

***

Meeting At Night

The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro’ its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

By Robert Browning

***

On the Beach in November

My heart’s Ideal, that somewhere out of sight
Art beautiful and gracious and alone,—
Haply, where blue Saronic waves are blown
On shores that keep some touch of old delight,—
How welcome is thy memory, and how bright,
To one who watches over leagues of stone
These chilly northern waters creep and moan
From weary morning unto weary night.

O Shade-form, lovelier than the living crowd,
So kind to votaries, yet thyself unvowed,
So free to human fancies, fancy-free,
My vagrant thought goes out to thee, to thee,
As wandering lonelier than the Poet’s cloud,
I listen to the wash of this dull sea.

By Edward Cracroft LeFroy

***

On the Dunes

Here all night on the dunes
In the rocking wind we sleep,
Watched by sentry stars,
Lulled by the drone of the deep.

Till hark, in the chill of the dawn
A field lark wakes and cries,
And over the floor of the sea
We watch the round sun rise.

The world is washed once more
In a tide of purple and gold,
And the heart of the land is filled
With desires and dreams untold.

By Bliss Carman

***

Sandpiper

The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.

The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.

– Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains
rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,
he stares at the dragging grains.

The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. The tide
is higher or lower. He couldn’t tell you which.
His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,

looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.

By Elizabeth Bishop

***

Silent Conversations

Sitting in a hammock,
the wind rocks me to sleep.
The warm sun
wraps me up
and holds me tight.

The salt in the air
fills my nose,
and I can’t help
but love the feeling
of sand between my toes.

The waves roll up on the sandy shore,
singing me to sleep.
I lie lifeless.
Not a care in the world,
not a single peep.

The art of doing nothing
really is something.

By Lexi Baylor

***

Simple Pleasures

Watching all of the sweet smiles on a loved ones face
Running around the race track and keeping up the pace
Touching the dew drops glistening on the wet ground
Going out to dinner then stepping out on the town

Getting together for a picnic in a lush green park
Laughing and playing many games long after the dark
Walking barefoot over the soft warm sand at the beach
Looking up at the stars at night that’s too far to reach

Sitting and talking on the porch gazing up at the moon
Wondering how awesome not wanting to go to bed too soon
Humming a lively tune or singing a medley of love songs
Thinking about what went right and not about the wrongs

Tasting sweet honey from a hive freshly made by the bees
Smelling the fresh aromas emanating from magnolia trees
Listening to the voice and sounds of every living thing
Enjoying the many blessings that a brand new day can bring

Remembering the good old times that you and others shared
Hugging and kissing in showing others how much you cared
Giving a helping hand to some who show they are in need
Sitting there with the lonely showing someone a kind deed

Savoring the taste of a succulent and very delightful dish
Watching a shooting star at night and then making a wish
Reaching out your hands to others always with a tender touch
Telling your friends and loved ones how you love them so much

Reading a bedtime story to a young child sitting on your lap
Getting together with the youth just for a little time to rap
Wrote a letter then picked up the phone to dial an old friend
Enjoy the simple pleasures in life for soon it’ll come to an end

By Patricia Grantham

***

Swoosh, Boom, Crunch, Howl

The sun rises higher and higher, like a blossoming flower, as the children play…
Beach, Beach, Beach
The zephyr catches my skin like a wide receiver playing football…
Swoosh, Swoosh, Swoosh
The crashing waves sound like a head-on collision…
Boom, Boom, Boom
The sand crunches under my feet like cereal in my mouth…
Crunch, Crunch, Crunch
The salty water is carried with the wind…
Howl, Howl, Howl
The gulls soar higher than the clouds…
Swoosh, Swoosh, Swoosh
The child crashes to the ground like a rock slide…
Boom, Boom, Boom
The man walks on shells that feel like needles…
Crunch, Crunch, Crunch
The dog is angered by the birds…
Howl, Howl, Howl
The kite flutters like a plane…
Swoosh, Swoosh, Swoosh
The afternoon thunder blasts like a cannon…
Boom, Boom, Boom
The child snacks on some chips that sound like glass…
Crunch, Crunch, Crunch
The night has fallen and the coyotes holler like babies…
Howl, Howl, Howl
The sun rises again higher and higher, like a blossoming flower as the children play…
Beach, Beach, Beach

By Hayden Myer

***

The Hard

Here on the Hard, you’re welcome to pull up and stay;
there’s a flat fee of a quid for parking all day.

And wandering over the dunes, who wouldn’t die
for the view: an endless estate of beach, the sea

kept out of the bay by the dam-wall of the sky.
Notice the sign, with details of last year’s high tides.

Walk on, drawn to the shipwreck, a mirage of masts
a mile or so out, seemingly true and intact

but scuttled to serve as a target, and fixed on
by eyeballs staring from bird-hides lining the coast.

The vast, weather-washed, cornerless state of our mind
begins on the Hard; the Crown lays claim to the shore

between low tide and dry land, the country of sand,
but the moon is law. Take what you came here to find.

Stranger, the ticket you bought for a pound stays locked
in the car, like a butterfly trapped under glass;

stamped with the time, it tells us how taken you are,
how carried away by now, how deep and how far.

By Simon Armitage

***

The Little Beach-Bird

Thou little bird, thou dweller by the sea,
Why takest thou its melancholy voice,
And with that boding cry
Why o’er the waves dost fly?
O, rather, bird, with me
Through the fair land rejoice!

Thy flitting form comes ghostly dim and pale,
As driven by a beating storm at sea;
Thy cry is weak and scared,
As if thy mates had shared
The doom of us. Thy wail,—
What doth it bring to me?

Thou call’st along the sand, and haunt’st the surge,
Restless, and sad; as if, in strange accord
With the motion and the roar
Of waves that drive to shore,
One spirit did ye urge—
The Mystery—the Word.

Of thousands, thou, both sepulchre and pall,
Old Ocean! A requiem o’er the dead,
From out thy gloomy cells,
A tale of mourning tells,—
Tells of man’s woe and fall,
His sinless glory fled.

Then turn thee, little bird, and take thy flight
Where the complaining sea shall sadness bring
Thy spirit nevermore.
Come, quit with me the shore,
For gladness and the light,
Where birds of summer sing.

By Richard Henry Dana

***

The Sandpiper

Across the lonely beach we flit,
One little sandpiper and I,
And fast I gather, but by bit,
The scattered drift-wood, bleached and dry.
The wild waves reach their hands for it,
The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,
As up and down the beach we flit,
One little sandpiper and I.

Above our heads the sullen clouds
Scud, black and swift, across the sky:
Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds
Stand out the white light-houses high.
Almost as far as eye can reach
I see the close-reefed vessels fly,
As fast we flit along the beach,
One little sandpiper and I.

I watch him as he skims along,
Uttering his sweet and mournful cry;
He starts not at my fitful song,
Nor flash of fluttering drapery.
He has no thought of any wrong,
He scans me with a fearless eye;
Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong,
The little sandpiper and I.

Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night,
When the loosed storm breaks furiously?
My drift-wood fire will burn so bright!
To what warm shelter canst thou fly?
I do not fear for thee, though wroth
The tempest rushes through the sky;
For are we not God’s children both,
Thou, little sandpiper, and I?

By Celia Thaxter

***

The Sea

The sea is a hungry dog,
Giant and grey.
He rolls on the beach all day.
With his clashing teeth and shaggy jaws
Hour upon hour he gnaws
The rumbling, tumbling stones,
And ‘Bones, bones, bones, bones! ‘
The giant sea-dog moans,
Licking his greasy paws.

And when the night wind roars
And the moon rocks in the stormy cloud,
He bounds to his feet and snuffs and sniffs,
Shaking his wet sides over the cliffs,
And howls and hollos long and loud.

But on quiet days in May or June,
When even the grasses on the dune
Play no more their reedy tune,
With his head between his paws
He lies on the sandy shores,
So quiet, so quiet, he scarcely snores.

By James Reeves

***

The Sea Is Me

I glance across the moon lit beach,
The grains of sand squelch under feet,
Impossibilities, become real
But all that’s real is out of reach.

Reality overwhelms each day,
Confusion begs my mind to play
But all at once I’m insecure,
Which way to turn? I’m not quite sure.

Each wave that crashes, pounds the sand,
The rhythm writhes inside, I find
That with each breath, each heart felt beat,
My turmoil sounds and it repeats.

I close my eyes and all I hear,
Is thunder from my inner ear,
A beating heart, my rhythmic drum,
The sea is me and I’ve become.

By Sarah Persson

***

The Sea Mist

It crept—crept—crept—
Into the rooms where people slept,
And breathed on the mirrors till they wept.
In hungry mood
It stole to the pantry crammed with food
And left the taste of its saltness there.
It sat in my chair
And molded the leather. It filled the air
With a great gray ghostly horror that was not light
Nor dark, but a pall and a blight.
It crawled through the trees,
And changed the woods into islanded seas.
It prowled—prowled—prowled,
And all that it touched it fouled.
It was not the sea,
My splendid, brave, and glittering sea,
But it held the ocean as it held me,
And hushed its waves with its mystery.

It was not the sea, for out of the sea there came,
With a cheery burst of jubilant flame,
My comrade the sun that put it to shame,
And thrust it away
With its trallings gray,
And its shattered horror that had to obey,
When, lo, a crystalline day!
But still, in the midst of the warmth and glow,
The clearness and fairness, I know. I know,
That out somewhere, beneath the horizon’s rim,
Lurks the spectre grim,
And soon, if I turn to sleep,
It will creep—creep—creep—
With its empty mysterious dole
Back into the world and back into my soul.

By Amos Russel Wells

***

The Summer

The saffron-yellow sun grins on top of the beige sand,
and the aquamarine waves wash up onto the seashore.
The towering palm trees sway from side to side
as the gentle wind whistles through the beach.

The field of vivid flowers dance and smile underneath the lime colored grass,
and the flap of a monarch butterfly’s wings soar through the broad meadow.
The coconut and lemon ice cream dripping down my hand
as the sun melts it like ice.

The swimmers sitting on the silver seats and speaking to each other
and watching the surfers surf on their surfboards.
The sun drifting down as it suddenly gets darker and darker…

By Sydney Harris

***

There’s A Regret

There’s a regret
So grinding, so immitigably sad,
Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad. …
Do you not know it yet?

For deeds undone
Rnakle and snarl and hunger for their due,
Till there seems naught so despicable as you
In all the grin o’ the sun.

Like an old shoe
The sea spurns and the land abhors, you lie
About the beach of Time, till by and by
Death, that derides you too —

Death, as he goes
His ragman’s round, espies you, where you stray,
With half-an-eye, and kicks you out of his way
And then — and then, who knows

But the kind Grave
Turns on you, and you feel the convict Worm,
In that black bridewell working out his term,
Hanker and grope and crave?

“Poor fool that might —
That might, yet would not, dared not, let this be,
Think of it, here and thus made over to me
In the implacable night!”

And writhing, fain
And like a triumphing lover, he shall take,
His fill where no high memory lives to make
His obscene victory vain.

By William Ernest Henley

***

Water Baby

beach day with salt matted hair
brown tan legs and chiffon flare
blue skies and ocean symphony
caressing skin in ripple harmony

feeling sand cover my toes
silk and powder sprinkling gold
sinking velvet touch in every step
this is where I am my best

if i had gills I would swim away
with the bluest deepest ocean wave
my heart would swell in underwater ecstasy
for I was born a water baby

by Sherry Anne 

***

While Walking On The Beach

You look out into the water;
The waves make the most beautiful sound.
A place you find peace and comfort,
Walking hand in hand and looking around.

As you walk toward the water,
Sand coats the bottom of your feet.
The smell of the sea salt drawing you closer,.
The view is so beautiful, oh so sweet.

Almost as if it is calling you.
Sometimes it’s only in your mind.
A place to clear your thoughts
And leave everything very far behind.

You find shells, rocks, and other things.
The warmth is like a kiss from up above.
Looking out into the Gulf Coast
Can only remind you of true love.

As the waves come crashing in,
Time seems to be standing still.
The sun is shining down on you
As you walk the beach at your will.

Paradise you thought you could never reach.
Out in the distance you can see the ships sailing by.
Tears of joy for the scene God has put before you,
As the moment makes you cry. 

Two shadows are together as one,
A sign of great unity.
A great day full of fun
While walking at the beach.

By Ralph P Quinonez 

***

Whispering Waves

Waves come crashing to grey sullen shores.
Powerful and strong, it breathes and roars.
Cascading and caressing each grain of sand,
A warm embrace between sea and land.

High above, a seagull soars high.
Wings of purity it spreads to fly.
Battling high against darkened cloud,
In a wind that blows fiercely, flying graceful and proud.

Beneath, the sand is soft and warm.
Sculpted by nature, it’s weathered the storm.
A passionate battle between calmness and rage,
A new chapter’s beginning; don’t turn the last page.

I listen again to the whispering waves,
Music of nature calming and brave.
Its power unknown, its stillness untamed,
Mysterious and magical, a treasure earth claims.

By Edel T. Copeland 

***

Your Words Of Love

I have seemingly missed your words of love,
Those words that were written in the sand
And erased by the first wave.
Do you remember, my love?
I have enclosed them hermetically
With that last kiss.
And, after that,
Another kiss
And another exotic beach
And another feeling, autumnal feeling,
Of another ostensible seemingly love
Fulfilled my nothingness…
Among corals and shells,
Dried by the winds of the sea,
I awake in following my lost steps,
Taken by the waves
And redirected to the great unknown in the sea,
That great eternal…..
I still love you,
I love you more, miss you more.
Yes, I still miss you
And I realize that all I can do now
Is to lodge near the moan of the sea sand,
Which feels like a silk slipped worn-out dress,
When I touch it.
And slantingly I elect the oblivion,
When
I want to kiss again and again
Your gray-haired temple,
But, in reverting, I receive only
The kiss of our child…

By Marieta Maglas