not sky
but surface
dances
dips
swells
undersurface
filtering light
limit
of swim
and leap
through thinness
returning
with gills
gasping
but some
drink deep
dive inside
particulate
salted thickness
breathe
down
with them
into blue gray
cold warm
current highways
carrying glacier
or lava touch
filtered through
coral forests
dying reefs
whale falls
sustaining life cycles
100 years
mouthless
swallow
of sponges
endlessly
and always hungry
salt eye
and bleeding salt
witnesses
where sand dries
we breathe stinking life
almost tasting it
moon pull
answered
thrust up
and drag
never meeting
that summons
shove of wind
and gravity stretch
together
reactive to each
touching
nothing
but wind
and light
earth and stone
continents
push back
contain
walls
to break down
protesting tongueless
pounding fists
dashed formless
shouts in
messaged water
scrape
and steal sand
to reflect
motion
rippled also
on the floor
always
bleeding
tide pools
and empty shells
***Another experimental piece for me. Last night, I tried to capture the movement of the ocean here, inspired by something my friend Jeremy said–I succeeded for about the first stanza. Oh well, I do like the images engendered in the effort, though…
Susan Daniels Poetry 
I think you succeeded for more than that first stanza. . . I don’t dare hold up my opinion as the gold standard. 🙂
I like the ambition here. I can see many poems branching off from this poem.
Thanks Jeremy!
Hey Sue…let’s go to the ocean! I have always loved the ocean, but I love it more in the eyes of poetry. Let’s go….maybe we can find some poetry in the dunes and the seaweed too. By we, of course, I mean you…but I’m living poetically vicariously thru you! *sigh*
LOL, you see what sitting by the creek does to my poetry–not sure you could handle me by the ocean, which is where I wrote my novel 🙂
What is it about water? I keep asking, and still have no answers.
Hey…I totally get that! Shoot, all I need is a danged old shower and I gush all over the place. We don’t need to figure it…just go with the ‘flow”
Yes, flowing away to the creek now…
I can relate so well, I may even cheer but don’t tell anyone :~)
Promise I won’t–no chinks in that armor.
me like! The waves, the wind, motion, scraping, pounding….lovely!
thanks so much–glad you like it…..
Yesterday on my early morning jogging along Oyster Bay at about 0545 hours, I thought I heard the waves laughing, yes roaring with rippling laughter, calming too. They were laughing from a high rise apartment block that stood on a cliff barely 300 meters from the Indian ocean. Since it was early morning, I thought I was dreaming and imagining things or that the ocean had moved inland over night – and so I stopped and looked and listened and then discovered to my great joy that it was actually the ocean laughing as the sound waves of the waves of the ocean reflected, bounced off and danced around the huge surface of this apartment block, pushing back and rushing back to the open spaces, meeting and merging with fresh sound waves that came floating in from the flowing and foaming ocean. I listened, amazed as they spoke to the world and to me…they spoke and sang of the beauty in simple things and how simple things come to you and surprise in the rising of a new day to raise your spirit – spirit raised, I then recommenced my jog and ran my four km jog with a light spirit, the singing waves cheering on my aging limbs!
Reading your poem reminded me of that experience.
That is such a beautiful thing to share–the laughing, singing, foaming ocean; the rhythms of the waves…and my few lines here brought that transcendence to mind–I am humbly grateful they could do that for you. Wow.
every short stanza~the swift chop of the sea~ rhythm swells! Tthe culmination is a beautiful giving birth!~Deborah
Thank you so much, Deb!
alot of powerful (e)motion packed into these words…I’m diggin’ it 🙂
LOVE the comment! 🙂 Thanks so much. Yes, lots of motion and emotion–funny thing, the ocean brings out a lot of both for me.
You succeeded marvelously, touching on so many aspects of the ocean. I like “carrying glacier / or lava touch”. This is one that I want to come back to and read again.
Richard
Richard–thank you so very much for your comment and support–and for saying you think it is worthy of another read… wow!