A Fiercer Light

At Seaspray

At Seaspray today
sea had a lot to say;
a roar began the thesis,
antithesis a hiss,
expounding aesthetics
of waiting objet trouve
with clinchers to prove, eh,
such textural exegetics,
curator of this strand gallery
offering 'to our curiosity'
the usual and the grisly,
the never seen previously
in many installations
arranged with daily patience.

And what a good day for it
not a smear of cloud to fret
a Prussian-blue horizon-line
the sea-green swells processing in;
white-Siberian tigering hills
collapse in coffee latte swills.
There's no one to say,
'Don't touch that exhibit!'
or try to inhibit
the silliest of play
with twisted driftwood snake
or antlers of dried sponge: -
snake, feint a sudden lunge
defiant moose-head, shake.

Dead manta ray and puffer-fish
make one quietish;
but marvel at the sea-star's
eleven-armed exotic swirl:
'That's the most I've seen so far.'
Wonder is tragedy's pearl.

And after a spell lying back,
examine the colors of sand,
the white, the orange, the black;
lever each other up to stand,
climb to steep dune top,
                                               teeter,
watch a ducked creek glitter
and cows graze at their ease
in fields beyond this breeze.

Plodding sand ridge sinking-in
brings us down to shoreline plain -
moving smooths of soothing cream,
blue sky lingering where they drain;
at sheeting froth reflexes hop -
lick your ankles if you stop.

At Seaspray today
sea had a lot to say;
we'd mutter and complain
at snarling military plane,
but found the big sea's growling good,
lent our ears to musical flood
delighting in a foreshore's strew:
'so various, so beautiful, so new'.
Luckily we had no sight
of 'ignorant armies' of the night.

.....................

Quote in first stanza from TS Elliot's Quartet 'The Dry Salvages' and in last stanza quotes from Mathew Arnold's 'Dover Beach'

Seaspray lies on Gippsland's Ninety Mile Beach, as does Paradise Beach