[Jayne Osborn]

John,
I would forgive you absolutely anything, my friend!

Martin,
I like the revision; it's much better with fewer 'and's.

Jean,
I'm glad you're now on board with LitRev. John's 1,2 &3 sums it all up nicely.

Roderic,
Glad you're on board, too! I agree with Ann; your poem can be 'notched up' a bit, and it also needs some punctuation in line 7 and the last line, though those may change if you're going to tweak it. But you're way ahead of me - haven't even got a glimmer of an idea for this one yet

[Jean L. Kreiling]

John, thanks for those answers.

Best,
Jean

[Roderic Vincent]

Thank you, Jayne and Ann, for the suggestions. I'll probably take those. Not sure if Literary Review admits stuff that half rhymes, scans and makes sense.

[Martin Elster]

Then Who Shall Win?

Ghost crabs in moonlight scutter across a dune.
Though camouflaged as air, they’re not immune
To the potent peril inching toward their site,
A feral demon threatening to smite
Whatever’s in its way. Then who shall win?
Creatures with shell or claw or wing or fin
Check out when oil checks in. They can’t elude
The kind of predator described as “crude.”
When pelicans and turtles start to glisten
With grease, it means in due course they’ll go missin’.
When such contamination reaches beaches,
The throngs won’t swim or bask or savor peaches.
Yet that alone could be the opening
For piping plovers to come around and sing
Their fife-like tunes again. The shore will heal.
Nature, not humankind, is at the wheel.
How many centuries, though, will she need
Before even a ghostie comes to feed
On seaweed that won’t sicken? Crude is flowing,
And no one knows which way the tide is going.

— Martin Elster
(27 Nov. 2010)

[Martin Elster]

If You Could Be a Beach

If you could be a beach composed of sand
Or shingle buffed and rounded through the eons
Or fragments of the shells of tiny peons
Of hydrospheric life, you’d understand

The feel of being tread on by the feet
Of bipeds (bird or human), being pecked
By beak, or surf-caressed, claw-scooped, or trekked
Across by sauropod and solar heat.

You’d hear the piping plover’s piccolo,
Be tickled by the trotters of crustaceans
Or, on occasion, bear the agitations
From heaves that cause the coasts to overflow,

Reaching to pinnacles where birds of prey
Survey the waves erasing nesting sites
Of turtles which, in Earth’s scheme, have no rights
(At least not when her lithosphere’s at play).

But what if you were you beside the sea,
Basking in the sun one afternoon
When Earth, for sport, decided she would spoon
Some brine atop your head? Where could you flee?

Better to be the beach and lick the salt
Rushing across your shelly, rocky tongue
Tingling from such cyclic thrills among
The rise-and-fall beneath the heavens’ vault.

— Martin Elster
(27 Nov. 2010)

[Martin Elster]

Sunday at Knollwood Beach

While dogs plunge in the surf and boats bobble and dip
on the waves, his feet flounder on slippery stones.
He stumbles on algae and fights not to slip
as dogs plunge in the surf. The boats bobble and dip
where the scumbles of aqua resplend. Motors rip
the air like shark teeth, matched by gulls’ hollow tones
as dogs plunge in the surf. The boats bobble and dip.
In the waves his feet flounder on slippery stones.

Waves, tossing her skiff like a toy faraway
in a sea of suspense, aren’t as deep as the swell
welling up near this shore where the terns dive for prey,
as huge waves toss her skiff like a toy. Faraway,
a kingdom awaits her where pebbles won’t play
with her balance. He slips. Brine is all he can smell
as the waves toss her skiff. Round that toy, faraway,
the seas of suspense aren’t as deep as this swell.

(19 August 2009)

[Mary Meriam]

On the Breakwater

One summer night, when wispy moon had set,
and slothful sea lay tranquil, lapping shore,
and stars glittered, the two young women met
and walked with fingertips in touch, unsure
of where to go, and found a place to sit,
remote, and turned their backs on lights and town
to gaze, without a word, at darkness lit,
but hardly, by a thin gold line thrown down
by Venus, with no sound except the sigh
and suck of ripples, and an owl’s high shrill
screeching, at times, from hillside trees nearby.
Then one locked arms around her friend, until
she felt the fervor of her clasp could be
in rhythm with the stealthily heaving sea.


Based on the 1934 short story “Two Hanged Women”
by Henry Handel Richardson

[Martin Elster]

I love your sonnet, Mary. I'm wondering -- since you are naming the moon, sea, and shore as if they were pronouns (which I like) -- if you might want to capitalize them with their adjectival epithets:

Wispy Moon
Slothful Sea
Shore

I really like the alliteration in the poem. Very musical.

Martin

[Spindleshanks]

This one's from the archives, but may fit the bill:

DARBY TO JOAN

How peaceful is the eve's approach, my love —
the setting sun draws shades across the bay
as gulls inscribe their arcs of flight above
the homeward yachts erupting through the spray.
Along the beach, the young folk still at play
cavort and frolic through the waves, and there
a young Adonis stands as though the day
is his, proud pecs and biceps bronzed and bare.

A sudden rapture lights your eye, my dear.
Reflection from the sun's departing ray?
A mirrored glory as the night draws near
and marshals its empyreal display?
The dawn of inner peace?
x________________xOr is it just
the candle's gasp—a last hurrah of lust?

oOOo

[Spindleshanks]

And another from the ragbag, which may be seen as either too dated or too apocalyptic.

VIEW FROM THE BEACH

A stone upon the pond of apathy.

Concentric circles ripple, swell and lift,
surge shoreward, whipped by urgent energy
exploded from the subterranean shift.
Along the old defense, the tidal suck
exposes hidden bedrock in relief,
returns in folds; the scending mountains pluck
from harbour, hovel, hold, their toll of grief.

Apocalypse? A ravaged earth's revenge?
The mindless consequence of time and tide?
Or, hapless victims of the social fringe
that marks an ancient have/have-not divide?

Dumb ribbons of detritus and debris
cast question marks across the bloated sea.

oOOo