“The Ocean” by Gordon Preston

Gordon Preston

THE OCEAN

has always
spoken to me

sometimes just blue
sharp as a thorn

and sometimes cold
like a human

and down
from the sea cliff
there are no strangers
to her sound
all animals
know

waves
dance their way
to the shore
in shouts
at high tide
and dreamlike at low

when night comes in
its darkening face
climbs the horizon

and the poor bones
of driftwood
wait to rise as peaceful
smoke from a fire ring

to a heaven
trailing
like a veil

between us

from Rattle #21, Summer 2004

_________

Gordon Preston: “At a writing workshop, Gerald Haslem stated ‘places write your poems’ and, though I have lived for 24 years in my wife’s hometown of Modest, in California’s great Central Valley, it is the ocean, our Pacific, that speaks to me, to us, having graced every pocket beach from Marin’s Red Rock to SLO’s Pirate’s Cove.”

Rattle Logo