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PER MARE PER TERRAM

Chant du monde boréal
Shoormal.
Sandshifter, 60N.
Where it all makes sense.


CHRONICLES FROM ARCANIA

Preamble

Through Chronicles from Arcania, I shall attempt to share walks with you, this poetics from 60N, where I feel at one with our Earth, my sense of place so maritime.


Tuesday 4 May 2010

When poets meet and walk the shore...

Intellectual nomadism in action 

Our words sometimes feel like seaglass - colourful, insignificant... Hiding among sea and sand grains, washed on a shore; undetected until one hand picks them away and accepts each as a gem stone.
Summer belongs to the comber. As splash zones turn into treasure chests, we look for something different. 

Whenever I can, I share slices of summer with close friends, either poets or earth nomads, who dare to swim in any sea, from the Baltic to Atlantic .

That day, we sought seaglass at Sandsayre. Our hands gathered Arcania's gold - seashells, strange stones, driftwood and multi-bruck.   
We drove back to her citadel on the hillside and sat at the table.There,our fingers dived inside the  bag and scattered the loot all around. We shared coffee, paper and pens. And re-constructed the moment through a poem so spontaneous, as each line fed off each oither's words. It's been sleeping in a folder for four years now and like seaglass, i look at it as a treasure.
It's called Your Driftwood.


YOUR DRIFTWOOD

Look no further than on the side of this ocean,
water green salt – deep & unknown just like my fear,
            this fear to jump, panic and drown

there is no…                                                        
hesitation in me?                
I am floating…
What if I fall in the water?
You are driftwood, lifeline on waves;
    that bit of you I’m holding on above brown kelp like a dratsie

I am the sea, the smoke,    
the fireplace, the warming coal,                      
you are the shelter castigated in bird’s song…

    sea-salt-drift-soul, I taste your love inside rollers,
    my nightmare tossed, smashed in the glass of the shoormal

drying up?                                           
Faded by the sun,               
smaller & smaller like sand grains?
 
   With you I ken I’ll never drown
whatever colour of the beach,
                                    water-wood-sand,

whatever language of the sea,
I hear it everywhere,
thought-drift-spell

  We drew no line in this blue hell,
metallic dream;

unspoken bowl of treasures,
touching me gently
the driftwood
like an invisible poem,
  ripples are humming lullabies
         distant echoes of sea stories,
fears draped in nets,
                        our smiles,
sundried.


Nat and Klaudia, Quarff, 3 Aygust 2006

4 comments:

  1. really enjoyed the flow in this poem and its shape; great images too; and fascinating that two can work to produce one

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  2. Thank you kindly, Gordon. It was a beautiful moment of creative serendipity :).
    The piece has never been edited and o must confess I like it this way.
    N

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  3. Nat, This poem feels like a deep coded memory of love's passion and so beautifully composed.

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  4. Thank you very kindly, Sir Heron :)
    your interpretation is... well apt :)

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