We are dipping our toes in the ocean over here at Tweetspeak Poetry. Find a poem tucked inside one of the photos you see here, as we continue to flex our writing mussels (Don’t clam up over our jokes 😉 ) in this week’s PhotoPlay 2 Poetry Prompt.
Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s PhotoPlay Prompt: Portrait of a Shell, Sand, and the Sea. Here’s a poem by Elizabeth that had us dreaming of a walk on the beach:
Archiving a life
by the edge of the sea
We search
For anything
That records all of this
Mirroring life
Buried in salt
Washed by the sea
We walk
Syncopated side steps
Forward
Then back
We track the slithering
Coast
Lined with debris
A field of antiquities
Offered up to me
For the remembering of this
Life
By the salty repository
He and I
Always together
Never far apart
Gathering up our days
In the wrinkled folds of flesh
Fingers unfurled
Hands, palm up
Receivers
Marking them
In shades of Olives
And here’s a photo offered by Susan Etole:
Poetry Prompt: Choose a photo from this post and respond with a poem. Place it in the comment box. We’ll be reading.
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Be sure to check out the highlights from Photo Prompt participants on the Photo Play Pinterest board! And keep clicking and/or playing with words.
Photos by Nick Thompson, and S. Etole. Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by Heather Eure.
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Sometimes we feature your poems in Every Day Poems, with your permission of course. Thanks for writing with us!
Browse more photography prompts
Browse more Sea Poems
Browse more poetry teaching resources
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- Animate: Lions & Lambs Poetry Prompt - March 12, 2018
- Poetry Prompt: Behind the Velvet Rope - February 26, 2018
Zachary Garripoli says
/Users/zacgarripoli/Desktop/Sea-Shell-tweetspeakpoetry.com_.jpg
Rialto Beach
At dawn I knelt to touch a star
clinging to a shell of hammered metal
in a tidal pool.
This afternoon a flock of birds
sniped at brine-flies
bursting out of white-hot sand,
while faceless totems drifted
back and forth between two worlds.
Now, as evening falls,
a million jewels emerge,
then plummet one by one into the sea:
too heavy for the sky to hold,
too beautiful for words alone
to make them shine.
Zac Garripoli
Janel says
WHOA. that was amazing. Well done Zachary.
Richard Maxson says
Beautiful imagery, Zac!
SimplyDarlene says
Elizabeth, this is my favorite bit of your piece… how you brought the searcher of shells to life:
Gathering up our days
In the wrinkled folds of flesh
Fingers unfurled
Hands, palm up
And miss Susie, terrific image!
S. Etole says
Thank you, Darlene. The shell was a gift from a friend who used to go scuba diving,
Maureen Doallas says
Elizabeth, I like the images of “the slithering / coast” and of those “antiquities” buried in “the salty repository”; also “Gathering up our days / In the wrinkled folds ….”
Lovely photos!
Sandra Heska King says
From Susan’s shell:
feel warm sugar sift through your toes
hear the salt song cupped in the ridges
slide down the tunnel
spoon yourself into the sea.
Sandra Heska King says
So I already want to edit this…
Janel says
LOVE ‘spoon yourself into the sea’
Donna says
Oh…. so rich with sensory treats. 🙂 love it!
Rosanne Osborne says
Shell Games
The hermits gather round the exchange
they see to be imminent. They’ve watched
their brother pinched by the confines
of a shell made too small by his expanding
girth. They knew he was shopping.
Their vacancy chain is on the ready. Queued
by size, another brother is ready to move
in as the larger moves on. They know
this means new shells, new possibilities,
new identities for everyone as they shift
and squirm like homeless teenagers
in a benevolent shelter’s clothes closet.
Retreating into the darkened chambers
of these new shells, they rub abdomens
against smooth interiors, luxuriating
in their new threads, secure in new fits.
They’re ready now to flex muscles,
shift the hand-me-down shells to catch
the light, gastropod cast-offs on parade.
They’ll protect their new wear and relax
their flesh, flash their pinchers in and out
of their new habiliments, eager young bucks
coaxing females who lurk and wait
in sea-side dives, eye stalks swiveling
for the perfect fit to birth their own.
Donna says
Roseanne this is so cool… Makes me see hermit crabs in a whole new way! 🙂
Donna says
I so love the details and texture of this poem. I used to go to Fl./Sanibel Island and was in my glory collecting their beautiful sea shells after a storm. And I loved seeing the snails poke in and out of their “homes.” I didn’t think of their need to up-grade as they grew and what it entailed! Awesome!
Donna says
Beautiful, Elizabeth… I can almost feel the ocean air in this. I especially like this phrase: “Gathering up our days
In the wrinkled folds of flesh”
I wrote a haiku to go with the first image –
abalone haiku
here, yet unobserved
mother of pearl born inside
ablaone skin
lynndiane says
Enjoy the delightful poetics here (your unedited post too, Sandra). I’d like to share a tan renga from my blog (with a photo of seashell)…
http://madhatterpoetry.com/2013/11/24/tan-renga/
Richard Maxson says
Elizabeth, your poems gives me goose bumps, particularly:
“Gathering up our days
In the wrinkled folds of flesh”
Richard Maxson says
What Glass Sees
The world is broken like a shell,
pieces shifting in the sand:
call them rooms, first,
with their changing shapes:
call them windows, there,
paintings moving on the walls:
call them houses, then,
comforting and tangled in their webs:
the children called out in the safe streets,
the bricks like walls at rest:
say, neighborhoods laced one to another
with trees and lamplight:
then, the bricks rise like soldiers,
the alleyway shortcuts bloodied and forbidden:
call this distance, no,
persistence of the moon:
call us cities of dust and tears, yes,
ships of fears, credos of rust:
the children in the raped streets,
the rocket’s red glare, rising in air:
say, distant and blue boil
of breathing, moist and white:
see us, infinitesimals, cast
like grains in a conch’s coil:
call us light, at last,
colors bound in a bright beam.
clbeyer says
(I don’t know if the free spacing I’ve incorporated here will hold up once I submit this post. If not, I’ll repost on my blog.)
from Nick Thompson’s picture:
what was leading then
or being alive
but the resounding if
the unknow of knowing
it was
to take the whole day
by the hand
and sing the louder for
having made a grasp at something
so ungraspable
as the sea who
by the time she reaches us
is nothing but shells
empty
yet a lighted black of color
and a new one with a name
clbeyer says
http://clbeyer.com/2014/07/25/by-the-time-she-reaches-us/
(the spacing I prefer)
Marcy Terwilliger says
“My Eyes Sea This”
Aged feet, wet, worn.
Walked many shorelines,
East to West.
Sand in colors,
White, gray and wet brown.
Sea dollars I’ve found.
Pink shells, color of baby mice,
They glitter like beaded eyes.
Smooth to touch,
Warm my hands.
Watch them roll up with the sand.
White birds stand on one leg too.
Me, well, I walk on two.
Black cliffs fall off to sea,
These are my memories.
lynndiane says
That’s a beautiful word picture, Marcy. I wrote a new piece along the same theme of time and memories…
tides of time
droplets
of water,
such small
seconds
in time
collected to
form many
minutes
of salty foam
spraying wildly
off crests
of rolling
hours;
incessant waves
pounding out
days
upon the shore.
an ocean
relentlessly
reclaiming
sands of
years
in wrinkling
imprint on
beach’s strand,
leaving us
with shiny
scattered
bits & pieces,
of shells;
life’s
iridescent
memories.
we pick up
the pretty
moments
and turn
these over
in our hands
but best to
leave slimy
clumps of
seaweed
to dry to
brittleness
with the
passing
of time.
Thanks for allowing me to join the conversation with more experienced and eloquent poets here 🙂
Marcy Terwilliger says
lynndiane,
Glad you found this spot, it makes me especially happy each day. Thank you, glad you enjoyed my poem, I love your slimy clumps of seaweed. Somehow I had forgotten those days of dark green.
Marcy Terwilliger says
“Timeless Wonder”
It’s the sea,
Roaring mighty in my ears.
Do you glow?
Do you wonder?
Jump a vessel,
Headed East.
Large Sail Cloth,
Searching
For another life?
Always a breeze,
As the sun sets.
Pink clouds float,
Across the bay.
Waves hit the boat,
That carry me away.