Monday, April 06, 2015

A gull takes a walk

Once I went to Pescadero to meet my sketching group and went to the wrong bay overlook.
They were not there. But this place was pretty anyway
and I found them later for lunch at Duarte's.
I like this picture for the gull and the woman on the far rock.
And the curl of the wave always is always pleasing.


The Wave and the Dune

     The wave-shaped dune is still.
          Its curve does not break,
        though it looks as if it will,

        like the head of the dune-
         shaped wave advancing,
                its ridge strewn

        with white shards flaking.
   A sand-faced image of the wave
          is always in the making.

     Opposite the sea's rough glass
cove, the sand's smooth-whittled cave,
           under the brow of grass,

         is sunny and still. Rushing
               to place its replica
    on the shore, the sea is pushing

               sketches of itself
  incessantly into the foreground.
All the models smash upon the shelf,

but grain by grain the creeping sand
           re-erects their profiles
          and makes them stand.
                                                     1964

May Swenson
(1913-1989)

The Oxford Book of American Poetry
chosen and edited by David Lehman, 2006, page 601

Still longing to see my Northern California sea and sky again soon, I found this photo to go with May Swenson's poem. It was tricky to type until I figured out that the lines are centered. She uses a diacritical mark which I cannot make, for combining re and enter, so I had to substitute a hyphen. It's a beautiful poem, like the motion of the sea. Do you ever arrange your poems on a central axis?

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