Poetry Corner: Oceans of Our Lives

POETRY CORNER

Oceans of Our Lives by Beata Wrzal

– 7/11/18

Hosted by Kathabela Wilson

Listen to the Ocean’s roar in our Poetry Corner today. Now in Europe, we come to the Atlantic, the Ocean of my childhood, from the Pacific, where home is in California. In traveling, our view is expanded. In the small shells of each of our lives, all the oceans are contained; the past and future of all living things in concert with these waves. On July 6, 2018, I was able to present to an appreciative musical audience at our beachside Atlantic Sunset poetry program in Portugal (at the ANIMUSIC conference), the first place tanka in the Sanford Goldstein International Contest of the Tanka Society of America:

the ocean
was in a rage last night
but today,
these peace offerings
of blue mussels and kelp

–Debbie Strange, Canada

We are alone and together with our gifts. Poets receiving and giving the gifts of nature, their muse.

~ Kathabela​​​

Seastack offshore Foz do Arelho, Portugal (Photo – Kathabela Wilson).

Mary Kendall

wild waves
pound
then pause ~
breaking on
forgiving sand

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Briony James

the great murmuring
ageless and ceaseless
roar
of water dragons
beneath the waves

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Lewis Coylar

seashell press to my ear
listening to the voices cast
into the ocean

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Madhuri Pillai

resort window
we watch the moon’s
silver signature
ripple on dusky Indian Ocean
another year of mother’s passing

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Stevie Strang

like the ocean
life has waves
folding
unfolding
even as we sleep

hundreds of people
on the beach tonight
googling over unusually high waves
a few on the shore alone
writing poems

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Roy Kindleberger

oceans apart
and somewhere in between
wave after wave
that sweep my feet at
different times in my life

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​Beata Wrzal

me and you
together…
the ocean between

after the storm
will you provide for me again
…waters of the ocean

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Light before sunset (Photo – Kathabela Wilson).

Mary Kendall lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. she says: ” I’ve been soothed, invigorated and inspired by coastal waves on both American shores as well as seas from northern Europe to New Zealand.”

​Briony James lives in Altadena, California. She says: “​I was thinking of was the Pacific, remembering the Atlantic waves of my childhood shores.”

Lewis Coylar says: “The haiku is honoring the millions of African ancestors that ancestors cast overboard during the slave trade.” Lewis lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Madhuri Pillai lives in Melbourne, Australia. She says: “The sea has memories of my childhood when, on summer holidays while visiting our grandparents, we would spend few days in Kanykumari, where three oceans meet, Indian, Arabian and Bay of Bengal. The sea brought a sense of calm, its vastness a sense of reality of how insignificant we humans are.”

Stevie Strang​, of the beachside town of Laguna Niguel, CA, ​took tender care of her mother in her mother’s last years. She tells us: “I turned to the beach many times while taking care of Mom. No problem was so big and the vastness of the ocean made my problems seem insignificant. I wrote the tanka ​”like the ocean” after I had a really bad day with Mom…when that happened I went to Salt Creek beach and watched the waves repeat themselves as I tried to calm myself down from the stress of taking care of Mom. I then realized that things happen, good and bad, even while we are sleeping. For some reason that calmed me down.”

Roy Kindleberger, lives in Edmonds, Washington. He says: “Whether the Atlantic Ocean as a child or the Pacific now, I love the ocean. I still will go out and play in the waves, but I also love the sights, sounds, and smells.”

Beata Wrzal lives in Hertfordshire (just outside London) and works in London as a district nurse. She says: “Love, like an ocean, is changing constantly. There are always storms, difficult times. But if it survives them, the happiness, security and peace of mind return.”

​Debbie Strange ​lives in Manitoba, Canada. Read more of her beautiful verse on her blog and order her newest book ‘Three-Part Harmony on Amazon.

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