Spanning Time & Tides in Poetry
April Poetry month has come to an end today. The poems (like my last entry) stem from my stay at my friends’ home and wildlife sanctuary a few miles inland from the Oregon coast. While they were away, I had the privilege of tending many egg-laying, happy chickens plus six also very happy lovebirds and two parrots that were rescued from grim lives. In those two and a half weeks, I fell in love with Esme the Amazon parrot, and often wrote in the same room with her. Stroking her head and cheek feathers gently, I learned to read some of her behaviors and came to new insights about birds, informing the new book I’m working on now.
All poems and photos by Marina Richie. Enjoy. I am grateful for feedback from the talented and generous poets of my April Poetry Month Group. I also enjoyed trying poetry prompts from several sources, including River Heron, NaPoMoWri, and Zingara.
The poem below is my response to a prompt challenge to write with one syllable words only. The inspiration is the giant spruce at Cape Perpetua.
Old Spruce Spans Time
My hand on your trunk. Bark furred moss
not rough. Tough as seal hide. Blue
whale of trees. Trunk tall as ship mast.
When I crane my neck, I see your gnarls,
knots, and a scar with ooze of sap.
A rare bird of the sea comes to nest
on a high wide limb, a sky plot of moss
and ferns. Here she rears her one chick.
A ball of fuzz. Flaps to the old grove
at dusk with a fish. Out at dawn.
My heart yearns to turn all clocks back.
Time an orb web with spokes. A wheel
of luck. A pluck of harp string. A twang.
A folk tune. To be a wood nymph.
Swing from sprays of twigs. Palm light rays.
Slide on slick mud with snail, slug, and newt.
My beak pours thrush song. I bloom
for bees to buzz in. Come find me!
I am bay, cove, shade, and root
linked to your kin, wise spruce.
Tree talk. Codes tapped in soil
where mites chew dead leaves,
while high in your crown
you sip from coastal fog, a belt
of mist and spell. But not all is lull.
Storm strikes. West winds gust. Hurl
rocks off cliffs. Spears spark flames.
Creek floods. Whole trees surge
to sea. Rips, carves, brute force.
Change is raw but not cruel.
In gaps where trees fell, moths
will float like slips of white type
on inked breeze. Lush leaves blessed
by full sun hide bird nests, twined
cups laced tight to stems.
I press my cheek on fine scales
My ear clamps to your bark. Arms
stretch wide. Strain to hear
the beat of your old heart
when a wren by the coiled stream
leaps to a root perch. Short tail
flicks up. Tips up a thin bill.
Flings sweet and wild notes
like ticks of time.
Hideaway
Maples uncurl leafy fists
grasping Spring uprising
from a mist-blurred marsh
Sunrise a dreamy silver pour
languid over rusty bike chain
sculpted into a heron
Four rescued lovebirds build
nests of paper scraps. Flare
tropical wings in an aviary
Junco hopscotches flagstones
near clucking pecking fluffy
chickens with dinosaur toes
Blackbirds click and clack
Band-tailed pigeons coo coo
One hen flies over the fence
I’ve named her Dorothy
leaving Kansas to find
where the rainbow ends
Wood ducks glide radiance
Rufous hummingbird hovers
My heart a flower to sip
Swallows carve tidal breezes
crisscross sky just shy of blue
kissing this pura vida
The poem below stems from a memory when my son was three or four years old. I wrote this on Easter Sunday of 2025. The form is called a Haibun–a prose paragraph followed by a haiku.
Boy at Bannack Ghost Town on Easter Sunday
Jackrabbit springs over sagebrush. Wooden door loose on a hinge bangs in wind. Lost gold whispers in sequins frosting a meadow. A boy of four swings his basket. Runs to clasp a golden egg garlanded in bunchgrass. Skips to a juniper. Ducks under a willow. Grasps a blue egg. Cradles the sky in his tiny palms. Races to his mother who tousles his tangled hair spun of gold and copper. Meadowlarks bright as gold coins sing molten blessings emblazoning a ghost town where miners turned over a creek, turned over their souls for flakes of gold. The boy with golden brown eyes plunks down his basket and looks to the sky where sandhill cranes bugle tremolos tendering gold. Chasing wild birds ghosting away, he flaps, leaps, laughs, and kicks off his yellow rubber boots.
Seeking gilded fortune
Toiling miners held hearts ransom
True gold dusting bird wings
The geologist in the poem below is Marcia Bjornerud and the quote is from her fabulous book Turning to Stone, Discovering the Wisdom of Rocks, the 2025 John Burroughs Medal winner.
The Pull of Tides
My body spills into the sinuosity
of an unhurried tidal creek. Folds
into the curving earth. Sinks down
below the waves to somersault
with harbor seals.
Please let me stay here forever.
I’ll breathe through gills. School
with silver flashing krill right
into the mouth of a gray whale.
Even that
better than dystopian news
when my finger presses FM radio
as I drive to the beach in my Prius
tuned to NPR, now a target too.
Like me.
Gusty winds fling sea foam high
above a roiled Pacific pounding
black rock islands where gulls frenzy
and scream at a bald eagle flapping by.
National symbol.
“There is no such thing as a natural
disaster,” wrote the woman geologist
who knows rocks as sentient beings.
Time travelers dropping warnings.
Cascadian Subduction.
The coming tsunami. Biggest
earthquake of all. Beyond our control.
Is that what it will take for humans
to at last fall on their knees?
I doubt it.
The sun is too bright reflecting mirrors
off the tumultuous ocean.
Sixteen sandpipers skitter along
the line of wave and beach
in synchrony.
The haiku below was in response to an image, thanks to the River Heron Review poetry prompt. See photo below.
Haiku
Admiring her shadow
Aphrodite poses as a Greek urn
about to shatter
I dedicate this blog to Ram Papish, Dawn Harris, and to Esme, my muse during this dreamy stay at their home. I miss her.
Here’s to May Day rallies and protests tomorrow. Let our activism and resistance continue for this wondrous, life-filled, and threatened planet we are so lucky to inhabit.
