SALTMARSH POETRY

PLUM ISLAND
Behind us, a page of sand, open, preserves
our tracks and the cuneiform of birds,
monkish penmanship of seawrack glossed
with crack-hinged razor clams, papery claws,
dried bladders, crushed spirals, sticks, smooth stones;
farther, beyond the dunes, a crabbed scrawl
of brush says both winter and resurrection.

Above us, gray cursive on gray sky,
a paragraph of gulls edits itself,
braiding the arguments of season and season
into one cry.
Before us, a long wave
comes licking and licking again, foamy
restless tongue on this brown manila beach
where the sea folds and unfolds itself, still
undecided how to begin again,
how much to promise in its one blue letter.

Rhina P. Espaillat
Powow River Poet

SONG O’ THE DUNES

Sandland at twilight,
    All hushed in brooding gray –
A place to find your heart again
    And cast your cares away.
Duneland at sunrise –
    Life’s glory risen new,
   The arms of freedom flinging wide
   The gates your dreams saw thro.’

Sandland in starlight –
     The night-song’s voice is dear,
And folds the peace you thought of God
    Where held your heart its fear.
Duneland at noontime –
     What sorry stuff is gold,
That royal pride and miser greed
      In foolish passion hold.

Sandland in shadow –
      Of shining in the sun –
           What care you for the fame of men
      Of what their wars have won?
For Duneland is dearest
      Because no place is there
For echoes of the battlefield
       Or scars its victims wear.

                              GEORGE E. BOWEN

excerpt from……………………Hymns of the Marshes

   And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea
   Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be:
   Look how the grace of the sea doth go
   About and about through the intricate channels that flow
          Here and there,
              Everywhere,
   Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes,
   And the marsh is meshed with a million veins,
   That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow
   In the rose-and-silver evening glow.
              Farewell, my lord Sun!
   The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run
   'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir;
   Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr;
   Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run;
   And the sea and the marsh are one.
   How still the plains of the waters be!
   The tide is in his ecstasy.
   The tide is at his highest height:
              And it is night.
                                                                                         Sidney Lanier