Pines At The Sea

Old men in pine-coats wish for the sea

Smelling sweetly red and green,
Stretching pine cones in the heat,
Murmuring agreement.
These dappled tree men, leaving for the sea,
Pass hedgerows full and curving on the wind
Which vein this shelving cup of earth.

And thrumming bird wings ripple
The light and liquid matter of air.
Through hollowed thicket the robin threads a phrase.
"Again, again my first time again!
Come back again someday!".

Down they seep, root on root,
The lapping junction of here to find,
Spilling foxglove, primrose waving,
Nettle looks away.

While standing there, in bright awe,
Charging thoughts with droplets,
The shast of wavesong spits aloud
That this will be forever.

A moment's pause, a brief reflection.
Seagulls slice a sad farewell.
 
Nevermore to feel sunshine's lavish
Drenching this bough's blood heart;
The certainty of dawn and dusk
With fingers gripping soil and rock.
And trade instead for surging vastness.

Turning, nodding, charmed by folly,
Old and grey they slide once more
Beneath the wood dove's puffing blanket,
Blue black harmonies of night,
Showered with velvet lullabyes.

Reviews

[Nicole (Carpe Diem)]

i am pretty new to this poetry stuff... I never took poetry classes in school so I am not sure if i am analyzing poems correctly or not.

I do like the vivid details in this poem. An example of this - "thrumming bird wings ripple" i can picture that happening...

slowly, i am getting though reading your works... and enjoying them as i go.

[Gandré]

I like the calmness of this poem, and its quiet beauty. The last stanza was my favorite. Yes, I can't say which one I wouldn't like, all was perfect. You have this one more in meter than the one before (I 've read again, but already reviewed). Also this was a detail I loved "The shast of wavesong spits aloud
That this will be forever." ------just weaved together...fantastic.
Gandr�

[Andrew Dunham]

Thank you, C. Boylan. No there is no pun on pining for the sea, although it would fit. That is one of those hidden after effects. I suppose the sea could represent death, but death is a just change of form, it really just means going to the next, unknown, stage. The sea is more like a mystery here. The pine trees, like old men, have gone down to look at it again, and they stand there and think about the leap into the unknown (like earthbound humans), but then they are afraid of the unknown, and they turn away to go back to their rooted patch again. They don't want to trade the certainty of what they know for the foreign, "surging vastness". But they recognise their folly of coming to look each day and never taking the leap.

[Raef C. Boylan]

Does the title have a double-purpose, i.e. acknowledging that these two areas mourn for each other, but also to create a picture in the readers mind of pine cones/trees at the sea's edge - as trees tend to establish the presence of land, plus there's the reference to them in the first stanza? Or maybe a meaning that i've missed? Because, when i read it, i want to correct it to 'pines FOR the sea', yet i feel that your way is prettier.

I like the way you're exploring this concept, although i admit that i would probably not have caught onto it without the tip-off in your description. I guess i'm just not profound. Ah well.

This is a very pleasant piece to read and delve into; i think you've done well with the atmospheric tone - dreamlike...floaty etc, like that border between conscious and unconscious.
Does unconsciousness represent death here? The sea appears sinister in the final two stanzas; permanent in a negative way - "folly", "Old and grey", "blanket", "lullabyes" - like they've been enticed into dying. That's not what i thought of when reading your description, i was thinking more about heightened senses/self-awareness/open-minded/enlightened and stuff like that...maybe i just had the wrong initial associations?

Overall, this is a great poem. I admire your skill with language and structure; there's almost no rhyming here, yet it flows along nicely.

This has been in my library for a while.
I'm sorry it took so long to get around to reading.

[the ghost of pauls]

This poem is quite difficult in its construction but one can allow the sounds and movement to create the dreamlike state you are investigating in your writing. It is as if you are trying to position your writing between the ephemera of dream/subconscious and the linear geometry of the external world. Language is linear but experience is not. The dynamic of your work seems to be motivated by overcoming that problem. As a result you are creating work of great but subtle and entrancing beauty.

[An Ordinary Woman]

I'm pretty amazed at this ... it's beautiful.

I have only been to the sea once, and it totally took my breath away.

"There is a special place between sea and land where each mourns for the other. The land is the conscious world, the sea the unconscious, and we stand at the edge all day wondering what lies beneath, only to return to our familiars by evening."

.... often times I don't see much of a description along with poems or stories. But yours I found to be as thought provoking as the poem itself. I just thought I would mention that because it's very much appreciated when the time is taken by the writer to leave such wonderful thoughts to enhance the poem.

Thank you for sharing this wonderful poem !
xxoxx