A very still ocean of morning, beach walkers speed and fail
two gulls alert in a stretch of sun, cheating through rain, a woman's
voice amazed,
mitigated by a veil. Listening, a veil of voices with no sure shape,
trailing on wind
as a snap of cloth does. At last an avian statement. Very bold.

Language has it edges in nonsense and emphasis. It did rain? Skipping
pages;
thought skip. Sand in the crotch?
Re-emerge: the heat of the day's benediction is the smell of salt.

Language is a constellation of related tones. Desire surprises one, so
that as the sea
Unveils its tides, its cycles bring our own failures into relief.
A pity the landscape is used like this in my own poem.
Confines of this room offer no respite from the ocean; it now
is an expanse of my mind.

Warnings of rain up and down the coast. For winds dashing at oleanders
in red brilliance.

Drifted, washed and buoyed.
Expanse of seawater to horizon.
Children, their voices.
The shorebirds, elegant, white.
In the storms' eye
Blue herons.

Some poor lens: taking in what it can not, being in time lost.

Tasting its brine, spitting it. Ida, Annabelle, Annabelle, Tess.
A symmetry. It is the blood of tides and generations plunged
into surf.

Names, shouted into waves.

language of water

annabelle clippinger