Water Poems 1

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An ice turtle; a ladybug

An icy planet with icy rings

Why do my eyes see

So many icy

Things?

Fragile circles 

Concentric and thin

Til springtime comes,

Then once again

Ice melts

And I

Was lucky to see it all!

A candy-shop of ice

Claws, teeth, caps, cones

White as frosting

Spread across dark counters of rock

When I was at the beach one day, on a breezy walk

I found a fading rainbow on a boulder, drawn in chalk

And then I found another, this one scattered in the sand

Earth-toned little seashells that I held within my hand

I thought I heard these words spoken by the fickle tide:

“Enjoy my rainbows now, before they run away and hide!”

Among the rocks that lined the autumn Nova Scotian shore

We walked and poked, and looked for things left there by ebbing tide

Plucked from land, or scoured from the watery ocean floor

Treasure left in rocky fissures, narrow ones and wide

Seaweed, shells and berries, and barnacles bleached white

Gifts of color, living things had given to the sea

And pebbles next to water pools, playing games with light

And all of this for us to find, beautiful and free!

My wife climbed up, and sat atop

A giant boulder, by the beach

Stretch and struggle, then a hop

Precipice, and hard to reach

She made it there, upon a dare 

Then careful, not to fall

Rose upon a perch, up there

Where she stood twelve feet tall

Quiet, like a captain standing

Steady at the helm

Steering towards a distant land

Some far-flung foreign realm

A gull perched on a rock

And watched the waves roll by

With neither cry nor squawk

Nor winking of his eye

Pondering the grass

That grew along the sea

And thought, perhaps, "Alas,

There's nothing here for me..."

With hunger on his mind

He turned and flew away

To see what dinner he could find

Out on the beach that day