Cool caress of a breeze rushes up, then a gasp
of the waves, the ocean exhaling
its salty breath onto the lip of the shore.
Facing the horizon, I’m inhaling the spray
with a thrill almost unbecoming.
The blue has me in its brilliant grip.
Sea gulls dart and dash, weaving
sky and water. All of it
both striking and soothing,
halting and repeating.
I begin to know things
about myself, and, for once,
am not ashamed.
Cold packed sand anchoring my feet, I watch
as the drama unfolds: the urgency
of a tide’s mission, the pressure of water
determined to have its way.
Rocks of all sizes lie strewn in small piles,
heirlooms of the beach’s past.
And I want to gather them in my arms,
like family. To my left, a neighboring
pebble shifts, questioning its position, tilting.
I understand how it feels. Maybe I don’t know
what I am waiting for, but I can always
find it at surf’s edge.
Seaweed-fused waves greet stones,
conveying messages home. Eons of stories
revealed: tales of triumph, sorrow, upheavals,
and everything in between. Water mixes
with time and takes what it wants. But
there’s a giving, too. Listening to water, rock
becomes fluid. Don’t you see—
every hardness is poised for this.
This poem first appeared in MacQueen’s Quinterly (2023).
—
Anne Rankin’s poems have appeared in such journals as The Healing Muse, Passager, Scapegoat Review, Atlanta Review, Kelp Journal, Does It Have Pockets?, kerning, Rattle, Maine Public Radio’s Poems from Here, and elsewhere. Her poem “Small Primer on Loneliness” received Honorable Mention at the Belfast Poetry Festival 2021. Her essays have appeared in The Columbus Dispatch, The Mount Desert Islander, The Washington Post, and elsewhere.
