I wrote this one a while back but it's topical. Anyway among the things I
want to know is whether the last stanza should be left off altogether. It's
a belt and braces poem. Can I make do without the braces?


Colin




TIDES

Looking down into sea water
in vain I try to find the morning's walk
where I moved dry-shod over weed-covered rock
and toyed with the idea of water
in air where gulls could soar.
Pools I found with crabs,
patient anemone and snails,
in the distance
the breaking sound of a receded tide.

From the jetty my confusion is deep.
Weeds leap to meet me from the sea floor,
tree-sized fronds a gauntlet
that memory runs in recollection
of dry boulders and demure pools
and the patches of sand
I marked with confident feet.

Advancing waves
bring life to the kelp,
limp leather to forest moist
where cod and saithe and flounder make their way,
but it's not until
the water stills and the mind is calm
that I locate together
those two places, rock for rock,
embed once more each weed on the sea floor.

So too do night and day and human dreams
occupy their common space
as if to make opponents of us all
as words like water make anew the world we live in
as mind reorders all its elements,
our tranquil visions calm indeed
that find themselves in every other form,
denying not what need not be denied.

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