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Destiny

The rock

The rock on a high coast, on which I leant.

Your love, as strong as the rock.               

 

We were

children,

we held eternity blindly; we reached

for a meaning that was greater than life:

destiny.

 

Destiny - word of fools.

Your eye and mine:

they saw

only a hazed horizon.

 

Illusion.

Endless line before endless line

losing time to d...

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🌷(4) 

destiny   life   future   sea   Hopkins   Dewi Emrys

Life Tercets

1
A story about
                an old poet
    and his cottage

2
A dream of an old mariner
                lost in Wales
    adrift on his words

3
A memory of
                a young boy
    on his maiden voyage

4
A memory of
                innocence
    lost at sea

5
A line on a chart
                between a girl
    and loneliness

6
A communion
               ...

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🌷(3) 

life   love   sea   memory

Winter Beach

Remember

The sea assaults

Of winter gales when

Towering spray sheets curl

Over the green-stripe tower

At the harbour mouth

And waves roll shoreward

Beside its jetty

Shingle crashing

Floating spume across the beach

With black stones cold shone by spray

That above the wave thrust

Hides the horizon behind its mist

As the sun shines low

On a December afternoon

...

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Tan-y-Bwlch   beach   sea   storm   waves   jetty   harbour   shingle   spume

The Sterling Castle, 1703

The sands move

brushed by moray tale

shivered in clouds

by a sole's shy shift

the currents stir

shaking silt

to mist the sea

to settle -

moving time

over an old log reel,

clearing the centuries  

discovering old timbers:

dead ribs

reaching up to past waves

offering their history

to the naked shipworms.

As the crabs scuttle to explore

as stars cree...

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HMS Sterling Castle   The Great Storm   1703   Goodwin Sands   wrecks   sea   storms   waves   wind   sands   sandbanks

The Estuary

I am

barefoot

on a far tide line

sand rippled

spread

with estuary shells

with oystercatchers

soft where rills run down

or the sea pools

behind a half-sunk stone

or a mooring chain

I am

watching

moored yachts

swinging to the tide turn

above their sunken reflections

angled lines of cirrostratus

echoed below the horizon

in the mirror gloss sea

...

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🌷(3) 

beach   boats   clouds   estuary   reflections   river   sand   sea   seaweed   tide   tide line

Stranded High

Yet

My heart aches, and clouds hold fast my mind

Thought still I hear

The silence of the waves

The silence of their Siren pull

wash like hemlock through my senses

Their echoes crashing on my island shore

Returning to the sea

Unheard

Their hushed harmony

Foams surging up my beaches

A descant imprinted on my strand

Whispering back to the squalls

Unheeded.

Ne...

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🌷(1) 

Sirens   island   isolation   drugs   waves   music   vortex.whirlpool   highs   sea

Images of a High Tide

harbour entrance swell

river bridge

above the beach

the scraping rattle

millions of stones

sucked off the beach

returning to the sea

 

beside the harbour wall

crossing waves

rearing waves

joining

breaking in foam

crashing

onto the shingle

the vast pull

of the receding sea

the undertow of sound

 

the bay

grey brown sea

under a blue sky

...

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beach   driftwod   fishing nets   harbour   sea   seagulls   surf   tide   undertow   waves

Summer Seascape

In the sun's mid-day heat

I see the tall field grasses flow, swell

and come towards me in waves               

surging before the day's wind

the seed-head spume constantly bowing

seems to fall on the field strand where I stand.

The rhythmic onslaught of the waves

continues through the long afternoon - 

a tide of wind-driven swells and rollers

always flowing to my feet, w...

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🌷(2) 

beach   ebb   fields   harvest   hay   hay fields   sea   swells   tide   waves   wind

The wave behind the wave

From beyond the far horizon arc

travelling travelling calmly on 

to swell gently across a sea

until the deep corals 

are left far behind

and the seabed 

rises sloping up 

to meet land

forcing us

to turn

to curl 

to break

to surge

to rattle stone

to shape sand 

our strength waining 

retreating quietly beneath

the wave behind our wave

a curling s...

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Sea   waves   swells   beach   shingle   sand   wave crest

Towards Beachy Head

In the distance

the green tops to the chalkwhite cliffs

slope down to the sea

behind countless breakwaters

wading out through low waves

their wooden posts testament

to the shifting stones of time

 

Below the grey sky

the bluegrey water rattles the beaches

sloping down to the sea

between stark black breakwaters

mute guardians of the coast

each wooden barrier m...

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groynes   breakwaters   cliffs   white cliffs   beaches   stones   sea   sky

My Sunset Haiku as a Sunset Englyn

My Sunset Haiku [1] as a Sunset Englyn [2]

 

A green flash from the setting sun - and night

Now sea and sky are one

Dusk from the gold orb is spun

Thus this mystic day is done

 

 

______

1.

Where sea and sky meet

                a green flash from the set sun

Lighting distant shores

 

2.

The Welsh englyn unodl union is a straight one-rhymed englyn consi...

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haiku   englyn form   englynion   sunset   day   night   dusk   sun   dark   sea   horizon

The Artist [1]

In so few splashed acrylic lines

see Cornish fishing boats

take shape against the quay

the red hull and the yellow

 

See Cornish fishing boats

mirrored in the harbour sea

the red hull and the yellow

with the deep sky sunk below

 

Mirrored in the harbour sea

the jumble of masts and cranes

with the deep sky sunk below

and the distant sea above

 

The jumbl...

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artists   Cornwall   docks   Falmouth   fishing boats   harbour   painting   Pantoun   reflections   sea   ships

The Land of a Giant

Between the dark Ystwyth and the angry sea

We walked the cold stone beach

From the swirling river mouth

To the striated rocks beneath the southern cliff

Their upended strata pointing the way across Tan y Bwlch

Beyond the town beneath its northern cliffs

 

A Celtic god watches and menaces

Black Lugus on Pen ddinas Maelor:

We brave his fierce storms which shade our day

...

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🌷(2) 

beach   sea   storm   waves   flotsam   mythology   history   Celts   Ceredigion   River Ystwyth   Pen Dinas Maelor   Pen y Dinas   Tan Y Bwlch   cliffs   Lugus   Maelor Gawr   Lleu Llaw Gyffes

Gower

The sand was always hot

                beside the white dunes and the coarse grass

               

The sea was always blue

                between the black rocks and the horizon haze

 

The beach was always ours

                between the seagull shout and the distant crowd

 

We were always alone

               between the far world and our near union

 

We swa...

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beach   dunes   future   Gower   marriage   sand   sea   south wales   swimming   Wales

Forvie, March 2017

Dunes...

And then the sand flowed like the tide

Shifting the land at the wave edge of the sea

A vast striated plane of drifting whirling grains:

Aged dunes lost to the wail will of the wind.

As we walked close by the sea suck and ripple

The bound beach rose and swallowed our grounded feet

We seemed to be free floating sand cloud high

In the sandsmoke drifts rushing to their...

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Sand   Sand storm   beach   dunes   sea   Forvie   Scotland   coast   village   fishermen   chapel

Water

MAN:          In so short a time

I saw a future

Flow

Created

From the formless waters

Born

From the darkness

The way begins

All words are water

Flowing

 

GAIA:             From my innermost being

       I gave abundance!

My words flow from the mountain top

My words give succour to the land

My words are the waters of the sea

 

PRIEST:          The ...

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🌷(1) 

blessings   conversation   drama   flow   Gaia   ocean   praise   river   sea   Tao   water   words

RETROSPECTIVE

i

Innocent

     he met a force

Untried

            it held him

 

 

... and wonder drained the world of substance

            re-arranged the pages of his book to give more radiant a reading.

                                                           

The light of new possibilities

pressed down on time.

The girl sang to him "You can hear the boats go by". He

l...

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Autobiography   Ceredigion   commitment   family   farm   joy   life   love   marriage   memories   mythology   navigation   oceans   sea   travel   Wales   long poems

Lost

And then

 

            at my source

I was lost to your ocean.

 

Flowing... your endless bounty stole my direction

            your depths embraced

            your corals welcomed my load

I drowned in your currents.

 

My hands caressed

your waves

My body plumbed

your deepest sounds

Your pools

received

 

Your tides were constant

            I sw...

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currents   loss   love   ocean   passion   river   sea   tides   waves

Ocean

Restless: my body is your ocean; my limbs the currents of the sea

You float on my waves - sink only a little

I hold your sacred vessel safe - we become one:

A perfect balance of forces

Your body runs its course through my being

I feel you cleave my waves

I know you as we sink

Black waters closing

And I know you as we rise

I hold you to float above the tide as we burst th...

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currents   love   ocean   passion   sea   waves

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