Beach Music

I grew up far from the ocean ... any ocean ... so the one time that I got to walk on a real ocean beach was ... to put it mildly ... a most memorable occasion.


Oh, I had glimpsed the ocean at the movies ... in books or magazines ... but never the real thing.


I think I was most impressed, when a face-to-face meeting finally came, with the immensity of it ... its power ... its beauty ... its music.


I tried to get some of that music in this little poem:



BEACH MUSIC


Waves come tumbling
onto the docile shore,
flinging foamy fingers
across the ochre plane.



Teeming with bubbles,
they search and settle,
soothingly diminuendo,
on a healing chord.



Eliciting a sigh
from pliant, sandy keys,
the fingers slide off
into the lap of the sea,


where joyous whitecaps
merrily urge them,

jostle and encourage them

to play it all again.

© 1998

(originally published in Capper's)

Today's word: joyous