The Poet is a Seashore Dweller

Tidal Pool, Innishmore

Rachel Carson once wrote: "To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of year, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be."
Today's poem was the last one in the Charles Street Manuscript and was meant to express all I felt about what it meant to write and be a writer.  It owed a dept to Rich, of course and perhaps a bit to Eliot, but mostly I wanted to take something I knew well - the experience of ocean's edge - and imbue it with what I thought was a deeper, more symbolic meaning.  Every image here is symbolic, and the experience of the poet as standing on the edge was meant to be as well.  To write poetry is to stand on the shore between the symbolic, the magical, the sacred on the one hand and the mundane, the earthly , the profane on the other.  It is the poet's job to point out that sacred quality in everything they observe.  In that way, poetry differs from prose.  Good prose makes us think " Yes, I know that.  I understand that, I have experienced that."  Good poetry makes us feel " I have felt that way, I remember that experience, I have lived that."  I submitted this poem to the only writing course I have ever taken, an introduction to poetry with Constance Hunting.  Her comment was "Big stuff indeed".  Well, a good effort, I guess. My apprentice work, if not my masterpiece.

Neither sea nor solid land,
the place wherein the poet dwells.
To one side rolls and swells the grey
green back of the ocean depths, of icy murk.
Hidden there beneath the waves
the predatory sharks of guilt,
the sounding whales of wisdom deep,
the moving schools of caprice and quirk.
Mysteries glowing far below -
glowing, even deeper places showing;
lost to all but the the strongest swimmer
who dares to dive below, desires
to plumb the depths of his soul.


The other side is light and land
of reason and of everyday demands.
The beaches, in their season, filled
with youngsters, dogs and radios.  Tanning
faces turned to the sun; coconut and sand.
Young men run to fetch light cans
from their treasure chests of ice.
Yet even here the sea intrudes,
not obvious, the waves allude
to deeper places further off.
But the sea remains confined
in basins, algae lined, rocky places
where sun-warmed water small life breeds,
snails, crabs, bright glinting seaweeds.


Neither sea nor solid land,
the place wherein the poet dwells,
Neither the ocean of Being, holy space
and time; deepest feelings from whence
all living symbols come;
Nor beaches, dunes and land
of everyday and ordinary.  Not the 
sun-warmed rocks and sand, the solid 
experience of living here.


The poet is a seashore dweller
between the ocean and the land
seeking the experience
of the fuller life between;
so that both worlds 
he may command.