Today the sea's at peace but not flat calm;
Six inches high, no more, the ripples glide
Across the furrowed beaches, cause no harm
But, moonbeam driven, fall back on the tide;
They do not break with foaming, fractured crash;
Collapsing froth meanders over sand,
Their undulations dying with each plash,
As each impinges less upon the land.
But their retreat from high tide's jetsam dark,
Delineated limit of their climb,
Declares defeat as, from the high tide mark,
Each vanquished wave breaks further out each time.
Smooth sand exposed; wild life to rock pool clings;
Its flood mere memory, low water springs.
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Author Notes
Springs used here as a noun meaning spring tides. On admiralty charts the depths of water shown in fathoms is that found at the lowest point of the tide. This is the low spring tide occurring just after the new moon and known to navigators as "Low water springs".
Although my last collection, Charon Memoirs of a Ferryman was entirely made up of sonnets, under normal circumstances I tend to consider the sonnet as a gentle form of poetry. Content here involves the sea in one of its gentler moods, so I felt that the sonnet form was the one to go for.
The artwork here has been admired, so many thanks to garygb for that one.
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