Breakers at high tide shoot
spray over the jetty boulders
that collects in shallow chips, depressions,
evening the surface to run-off level:
of these possible worlds of held water,
most can't outlast the interim tideless
drought, so are clear, sterile, encased with
salt: one in particular, though, a hole,
providing depth with little surface,
keeps water through the hottest day:
a slime of green algae extends into that
tiny sea, and animals tiny enough to be in a
world there breed and dart and breathe and
die: so we are here in this plant-created oxygen,
drinking this sweet rain, consumed this green.
Source: Collected Poems 1951-1971
spray over the jetty boulders
that collects in shallow chips, depressions,
evening the surface to run-off level:
of these possible worlds of held water,
most can't outlast the interim tideless
drought, so are clear, sterile, encased with
salt: one in particular, though, a hole,
providing depth with little surface,
keeps water through the hottest day:
a slime of green algae extends into that
tiny sea, and animals tiny enough to be in a
world there breed and dart and breathe and
die: so we are here in this plant-created oxygen,
drinking this sweet rain, consumed this green.
Source: Collected Poems 1951-1971
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