Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Ocean(s)

View of the Earth where all five oceans visible: World Ocean
Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific, and Southern

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”   ― Mahatma Gandhi

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”   ― Werner Herzog

“It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.”   ― Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us

“The winds, the sea, and the moving tides are what they are. If there is wonder and beauty and majesty in them, science will discover these qualities... If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.”  ― Rachel Carson

Clouds over the Atlantic Ocean

Midweek Motif ~ Ocean(s)

Mountain or ocean?  

When I live near one I long for the other.  

I don't think I could write poetry without them.

What about you?

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Your Challenge:  Choose an ocean you know or want to know~and in a new poem~use it to reflect on what is important to you.

🌴🌴🌴

excerpt from Sea Sand

                      by Sara Teasdale

I. JUNE NIGHT O EARTH you are too dear to-night,
How can I sleep, while all around
Floats rainy fragrance and the far
Deep voice of the ocean that talks to the ground?
O Earth, you gave me all I have,
I love you, I love you, oh what have I
That I can give you in return—
Except my body after I die?
II. “I THOUGHT OF YOU” I thought of you and how you love this beauty,
And walking up the long beach all alone,
I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder
As you and I once heard their monotone.
Around me were the echoing-dunes, beyond me
The cold and sparkling silver of the sea—
We two will pass through death and ages lengthen
Before you hear that sound again with me. . . . .  (Read the rest HERE.)

The ocean said to me once 
by Stephen Crane

The ocean said to me once,
"Look!
Yonder on the shore
Is a woman, weeping.
I have watched her.
Go you and tell her this --
Her lover I have laid
In cool green hall.
There is wealth of golden sand
And pillars, coral-red;
Two white fish stand guard at his bier.

"Tell her this
And more --
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands with corpses
Until he stands like a child
With a surplus of toys."

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

Related Poem Content Details

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

The tide rises, the tide falls, 

The twilight darkens, the curlew calls; 

Along the sea-sands damp and brown 

The traveller hastens toward the town, 

      And the tide rises, the tide falls. 

Darkness settles on roofs and walls, 

But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls; 

The little waves, with their soft, white hands, 

Efface the footprints in the sands, 

      And the tide rises, the tide falls. 

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls 

Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls; 

The day returns, but nevermore 

Returns the traveller to the shore, 

      And the tide rises, the tide falls. 

Howth Head, Dublin, Ireland by YvonneM

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and 

visit others in the spirit of the community—

(Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ 
Seeking the Extraordinary in the Ordinary.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~Earth Day or Earthiness

“We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.” 
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962)

"Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. The earth is sacred and men and animals are but one part of it. Treat the earth with respect so that it lasts for centuries to come and is a place of wonder and beauty for our children.” 

― Extract from Chief Seattle.

“The Earth is what we all have in common.” 

― Wendell Berry

http://www.earthday.org/2015

Midweek Motif ~ Earth Day

or Earthiness

Today, 22 April, is Earth Day.  On Earth Day we get "down to earth" ~ We pay attention to how to care for our planet more than one day a year.  I laughed at this "Wiki-How" article until I read it:  

How to Be an Earthy Girl: Love the earth and want to be more of an "earthy girl"? Here's some advice to help you achieve this naturally, and with a minimum of fuss.

Check it out HERE!  

Your Challenge:  Write a poem celebrating the earth, earthiness and/or attempts to help the earth live. Feel free to address only one aspect of the issue. 

Workers in Port-au-Prince building rock walls and planting vegetation
as ways to save arable land and avoid flooding in lower areas.
UN Photo/Logan Abassi

For a Coming Extinction

BY W. S. MERWIN

Gray whale

Now that we are sending you to The End

That great god

Tell him 

That we who follow you invented forgiveness

And forgive nothing

. . . .

(Read the rest HERE at The Poetry Founndation

Untitled

by Al Gore

One thin September soon

A floating continent disappears

In midnight sun

Vapors rise as

Fever settles on an acid sea

Neptune's bones dissolve

Snow glides from the mountain

Ice fathers floods for a season

A hard rain comes quickly

Then dirt is parched

Kindling is placed in the forest

For the lightning's celebration

Unknown creatures

Take their leave, unmourned

Horsemen ready their stirrups

Passion seeks heroes and friends

The bell of the city

On the hill is rung

The shepherd cries

The hour of choosing has arrived

Here are your tools

Lead

by Mary Oliver

Here is a story

to break your heart.

Are you willing?

This winter

the loons came to our harbor

and died, one by one,

of nothing we could see.

A friend told me

of one on the shore

that lifted its head and opened

the elegant beak and cried out

in the long, sweet savoring of its life

which, if you have heard it,

you know is a sacred thing,

and for which, if you have not heard it,

you had better hurry to where

they still sing.

And, believe me, tell no one

just where that is.

The next morning

this loon, speckled

and iridescent and with a plan

to fly home

to some hidden lake,

was dead on the shore.

I tell you this

to break your heart,

by which I mean only

that it break open

and never close again

to the rest of the world.

(I lifted this poem from "Heartbreak, Violence, and Hope for New Life" BY PARKER J.PALMER (@PARKERJPALMER), WEEKLY COLUMNIST for On Being with Krista Tippett, I did not ask for the rights, I so wanted to use it with such short notice. Please forgive me. I love you.) 

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For those who are new to Poets United: 

• Post your Earth poem on your site, and then link it here.
• Share only original and new work written for this challenge. 
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(Our next Midweek Motif is Justice or Poetic Justice.)

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