Post 35 Solstice by the Sea

Two poems written in the nineties; at around this time of year

SHORESCAPE  1991

As the tide ripples in
It falls on the sand like silk
White, gleaming in the dying sun
The iridescent folds of vaporous cloth
Cling for an instant
Then slip languidly away
Revealing the dampened skin of sand
Glistening with abandoned surf

Smooth, shell jewelled body of powdered rock
Waiting, acquiescent,
For the returning caress of shimmering foam
It creeps back, the lightest touch
Shape changing the silver contours of silica
Inexorably claiming back the ancient grain
Oblivious to the hiss of escaping air
From the captive shore
Folding, covering, clothing it all again
With night grey silk
Shot through with shiver white light
From the new magnetic moon

At last the solstice; and we welcome the change from long nights and short days. Star gazing in the chilly Winter evenings is wonderful, awe inspiring. But now we yearn for the return of the sun; I suspect in not too dissimilar a fashion to those ancient ancestors who gazed up to the heavens and wondered at it; and the mystery of it being there at all! 

DAY NIGHT BLACK WHITE

Day night; black white
Everything goes from darkness to light
And back again, like a pendulum swing
Nocturnal, Diurnal the pattern shows
See how the petals open and close
At the dawn of light, to the dusk of night
Eternal rhythms that keep us alive
That start the ripple that ends in the flow
Like early Spring pollen, so sweet in the hive

The light from afar makes the pulse of our days
As we turn from the dark to the light of it’s rays
Some sleep through the dawn,
Some walk with the night
Sometime we all know the dark and the light
We habitually seesaw from black into white
Till we leap from black hole
To the bright blinding light