Slate grey sky
Slate green sea
Ancient conifers
Snuggle up to the rocky shore
Recalling, perhaps
Distant ancestors
From a primordial ocean
Even I can imagine
With my scant sixty years
From this perch over Boiler Bay
Tag: Oregon
Beachcomber
Beachcombing
You come with me
The same way you come shopping
Indulge me
Shopping
You come into the mall
Find a comfortable place
Then sit and read
Or people watch
Feign interest in the things I buy
Then watch over the bags
While I go to another shop
At the beach
You walk safely
Beyond the longest waves
While I splash about
Getting soaked
Finding sea stars and shells
Sand dollars and seaweed
Always feigning amazement
At the wonders I bring
But whether a crowded mall
Or an empty beach
You always come
Often despite my protestations
That you don’t like to shop
Or go beachcombing
That you’ll be bored
And I’m sure your time
Would be better spent
Doing something else
“No”
You say
“I’m coming”
And it always surprises me
Takes my breath away
When I notice that your feigned pleasure
In a new scarf
Or a hermit crab
Is just a distraction
Because you’re not looking at the object
I’m showing you
You’re looking at me
With the sparkle of wonder in your eye
And I’m reminded again
That you come
To be with me
And there’s no place
You’d rather be
And, my god
I could not love you more
For the way you take pleasure
In indulging me
Colour in the Grim
Life
And Love
Bring colour
To the grimmest day
Beneath A Sullen Sky
The sky like the snow
Sullen and sullied
The latter a victim
Of spring thaw
The collected detritus
Of winter storms
Revealed beneath
Retreating drifts
While the clouds
Speak with the voice
Of ill wind and
Malcontent climate
But the lake
Ahhhh
The lake sparkles blue
And even the worrying breeze
Does little but kindle its glimmer
A beautiful scene
After the ranger’s warning
There would be naught
But the clouds to see
Defiance ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #328
Burned old crag
Half buried in the soot grey sand
Pitted by heavy rain
Issued from distressing sky
Black rocks
Tossed up on the shoreline
Decay in the surf
Still there is colour here
Kelly grass and golden straw
Life defies the gloom
Perfect Beach Day
Many will argue
Or just stay home
But there seems to me
No finer day
For a stroll on the shore
Than one marked
By a chill spring wind
Under a deep grey sky
Spitting rain and mist
In the temperate rainforest
That created the magnificent
Oregon coast
The Ebb & Flow of Possibility
In between
The dead
And the not dead
In between
What is
And what is not
In between
The light
And the not light
There find
The realm
Of possibility
Seen only
By those who conceive
A world without absolutes
Where dreamers dream
Between sleeping
And waking
While the world flows
Between being
And non-being
In the wakening hours we dance
Between self-remembering
And self-forgetting
This is the ebb and flood
Between the conscious
And the unconscious
Like the darkness
And the light
In eternal conflict
Only the master sees
The dominance of either
Is true darkness
While the light burns brightest
In those who come to know
The balance of both
Haystack Rock
A seductive rock
On ocean’s edge
Half the day
Surrounded by the tide
Attracting thousands
Nature’s iconic monument
To a monumental coastline
In time with the waves’ ungentle caress
They saunter near, then scramble back
This flightless flock of sandpipers
Photographs and selfies
Arm-in-arm and hand-in-hand
A deep breath in, a longer one out
The calm that comes on any shore
Where the surf rumbles and sighs
Some may say it’s the rock
But the rock is a draw as any other draw
A pier, a lighthouse, beach chairs and gazebos
It is the sea which helps us remember ourselves
Carapace and Claw
What’s left behind
On this near side of eternity
Shell of existence
Shadow legacy
Husk of memories kept alive
By those who’d known the shell
But never the true nature
Of what it protected
Too the trails
Footfalls left in the sand
Evidence of passing presence
Echoes oft anonymous
No matter all this
Tides soon enough erase
While echoes fade
To silence
So cling to hope
For something beyond
The far side of death
Or suffer the fear of oblivion
Morning Stroll in the Sand
A lazy Thursday morning
When life is but a stroll in the sand
With the river flowing out
The waves rolling in
Very breath of Earth
As we all take a welcome sigh
In advance of the hodge-podge concerns
The day will all-too-soon offer
May I carry that sigh of the sea
Into the coming hours
Breathe in waves of beauty
Let the day’s worries flow from my earthly body
The only weight I’ll bear
Left behind on the beach
Footprints in the sand
Pix to Words 