Shoreline – a poem by Melissa Huff

Shoreline


Along this rim of the Pacific		I breathe
	with the sea’s rise and fall	 my pulse
		echoes its rhythmic surge.
Feet flex with these sands 	dense
	yet undulating	a ground that shifts
		when liquid power pours out upon it.
Piercing calls of shore birds		the roll and rumble
	of whitecaps		a soft exhale
		as this giant body of water recedes.

Rocky tidepools harbor rippling anemones
	a rainbow of sea stars.
		The ocean’s pounding oscillations
leave behind 		gelatinous strands of seaweed
	driftwood fragments		abandoned shells.
		A shoreline that accepts what the tides bring in.

Isn’t this what my body must do—
	absorb 	whatever breaks
		upon it	wave after wave.
It forms its own tidepools—	pockets
	that shelter 	sorrow 	joy
		passion	pain.

I have heard this body keen
	with the winds  	cry
		with the plaintive voice of gulls.
Sometimes it sits	in silence
	letting life’s questions
		wash over it.

Isn’t this body called upon
	to hold		
		the immensity of life—its storms
its fierce loves	its calm interludes.
	And just like the shoreline		
		when it reaches	deeper
it becomes 		the sea floor—
	strong enough
		to cradle the world’s cadence.

Melissa Huff feeds her poetry from the power and mystery of the natural world and the ways in which body, nature and spirit intertwine.  An advocate of the power of poetry presented out loud, she twice won awards in the BlackBerry Peach Prizes for Poetry: Spoken and Heard, sponsored by the (U.S.) National Federation of State Poetry Societies.  Recent publishing credits include Gyroscope Review, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art and Healing, Encore: Prize Poems 2022 (NFSPS), Persimmon Tree and Blue Heron Review.  Melissa has been frequently sighted making her way between Illinois and Colorado.