Tag: British Columbia

The Retreat

She retreated
Not because the waves
Had come perilously close
Nor because the wind
Made it difficult to stand

She retreated because she had come
To feel the tumult of the ocean
To feel the battering of the wind
To feel the beauty of violence

Without consciousness
This is why she came here
And for a while
It was beautiful
And calming

The grit
And determination
With which life clings
To even the most
Inhospitable places
Astounds me

The iciest cold
The rockiest coastline
The hottest desert

And when I say life
Of course I mean
Homo sapiens

Sometimes I like to imagine
A world just like my own
But with some small, unsubtle change

Lavender sun
Cobalt clouds
Canary sky

I love
That I get to bring
Such visions to life

Windswept ragged
Choppy sea
Islands recede
Occluded grey
Splattered raindrops
Penetrate me

Though I flinch
In a fusillade
Of wind and rain
I stay on deck

Deep breath

Islets in the bay

Three drift
Lazily

On unseen currents
And gestures of
Some subtle local breeze

Yet held fast
In approximate array
By anchor chains
Deployed to ocean floor

This tangle
Life
On some lonesome
Rocky shore

Ordered chaos
Flurry of growth
Fluid
Thick
Wherever opportunity
Permits

And often
Where it seems not

Two fishers
Under sunset sky
One plies the ocean deeps
One waits
Patiently
For the flicker of a fin
A little too close
To the surface

Some small beacon
On the shore
It calls to me
It guides me home

Cuts through the gloom
Lights up the night
Love’s the call
Which sets me right

The waves crest
Far off the beach
Not with ferocity
But with energy
And intent

They rush onto the long
Shallow slope of sand
Which gradually saps their strength
Reduces their presence

Until they peter out before me
Weakened to ripples
Barely able to disturb the sand

The aqua sea
Rumbles up to me
Standing on the rocks
Broken like the waves
Which sundered them

Gnarled and frozen
In time
The crest which took
A million years
To break