Hello Colin,
             I liked your overall idea of presenting the journey of these sea creatures from their original habitat to the beach and death and then to collect them and transport them inland. It is a very descriptive piece and I think that descriptive poetry needs, amongst other things, a very tight rein kept on the sentence structures and sequence of elements in the description. In a few places I felt that you might like to look again at those aspects. For instance, in the first line I think the inversion of subject and verb reads a little awkwardly without having any poetic justification. Why not move to `lie´ to the end of line 1? The line `poised lie at the water´s end´ reads awkwardly to me. You could reorder to create `lie poised´ but I rather feel that there is just a bit too much happening in this sentence - claws open to grasp...lie poised...as if to reach. I feel a bit the same about the start of stanza 2. The mussel shells, and the limpets and all the observation of the limpets is just too much information for one sentence. At the very least I would put a fullstop at the end of the first line , after `blue heart´. In stanza 3 I thought the phrase `giving all to appear´ didn´t work. Some other phrase about leaving the sea might work better. Again, I think a fullstop at the end of the third line after `leaves´ would help and I would try to avoid the inversion in `knew not´. I´m not sure about attributing consciousness of the risks to the sea creatures, not even in their `deeper selves´. In the final stanza I thought the notion of the fish being `far from their comforting home´ was a bit twee.
I think the ending of the poem is very strong.
I´ve mentioned mainly things that I would change. I don´t mean that I didn´t like the poem, only that I haven´t enumerated all the good points. I hope the suggestions are useful even if you disagree with them. I especially liked your use of the sense of smell which appeared around the middle of the poem and again at the end. I think if this were mine I might try to use the sense of smell as a unifying element from the start and create a progression from the most `primitive´types of sea aromas to the final fragrance that you end with as a way of reinforcing the journey that your sea animals make.




Best wishes,    Mike





--- Alkuperäinen viesti ---
Silver Harvest

Where the waves wash lie hollowed shells of crabs,
Faded to pale orange, yellow or white,
Their  faces brittle on bodies light,
Limbs loose in the wind
And claws open to grasp the air or the fine sand,
Poised lie at the waters end
As if to reach the coastal rise.

Empty shells of mussels rest like the two sides of a blue heart,
Limpets worn to halos encircle sand
In the space where once was flesh
That held fast to the sea bed,
Were promised even then to distant land.
Razor shells bury their blades in the dunes,
Staking their claim in the hazardous light of the sun.

The jellyfish thinning on the sand
Shows every grain of silver in its lens.
All join in the odour that the tide leaves,
The ocean's offspring giving all to appear and to ascend,
Knew not the risks that they ran
Or knew only in their deeper selves the wrath of the waves
That separate from water the sighted and strong.

Sea fronds lifted from windless deeps,
Shielded from sun and storm, now stiffen on the shingle,
Give colour to the pebbles as I pass.
I tread a mosaic of periwinkles with bare feet
And hold whelks that have for ever
The receding sound of the sea to the listening ear.
New shells lie amid old stones varnished
Ring upon ring to a perfect point by the lingering brine.

The skin and eyes of beached fish stare at a blank sky
Far from their comforting home,
Eyes that stared once at a mirage of hills
Seen dimly beyond confusion of foam,
Drawn hither by the beckoning song of birds
On ledges where pink sea thrift springs from the barren rock,
Or further to the grottoes and bays of green
Where oaks gather over honeysuckle and primrose in bloom.
I ferry the shells of mussels and crabs far inland to the bluebell woods
Whose fragrance lifts year upon year to the summits of snow.

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Colin