Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Oceana

[Sea Goddess painting by Dusan at paintingsilove.com]


Oceana
is in love
with the sea.
Her heart swells
with the
rising tide,
and lets go
as the combers
break
upon the shore,
her breath
in cadence
with
their eternal
ebb and flow.

Salt spray
and spindrift
curl her hair
and keep fresh
her vision.
She cannot
breathe
away from
the smell
of the sea.

She dines
richly on
fiddlehead greens
and sea urchin,
set out on
plates made of
kelp.

Sometimes
a bright-eyed otter
joins her
at her repast,
while,
a ways offshore,
seals with curious
gazes
wonder
what's for dinner.

Oceana
sings
an evening song
as the sun slips down
behind the horizon
and the sky
is suffused
with crimson
and scattered stars.
Then she curls up
in her
driftwood shelter
and is
lulled to sleep
by the
hypnotic breaking
of the waves,
the surging, 
steady rhythmic
sursurration
of the sea,
pulsing like
a giant
maternal heart;
the sea goddess
of the underworld
feeds her
every
midnight
 dream.

13 comments:

  1. Every word weighed again and again, every line reworked and rightly in place, every stanza a careful seam to the bigger effect. Delicately told, Koko. And I can see my lovely word sursurration has swung back to action. :)

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  2. I like this series you are doing with the neat paintings Sherry. This one captured me and such vivid images and use of words!

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  3. Beautiful, haunting, sea song....

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  4. You identify so much with the sea / the ocean. So does D. Must be born into people who live for a time in B.C. Nice poem, Sherry.

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  5. You are finding your way back home, to your deepest heart. I sing with you, sister.

    Elizabeth

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  6. Oh! How I would love to seek refuge with Oceana now and again. I adore my Sonora Desert, but the sea beckons me here. You clever woman!

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  7. The sea has that certain alluring attraction and you've matched it so well with words for Oceana. Wonderful write Sherry!

    Hank

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  8. Well you can guess this floated my boat ... This is a harvest of shore-images, a cornucopia spilled from Calypso's blue creel. Riches in the first three stanza, peaches in the final one, lingering to drowse and dream deep below the surface. Yummy. - Brendan

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  9. love this sea song and the giant maternal heart.
    ..... beautiful

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  10. I love this sea song! It haunts with the salty brine of life, but the swell of your words echo in my heart!
    Gorgeous poem!

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  11. gosh it just feels really good to read this.

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  12. this reads like a fairy tale, or a myth ~

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