"pebbly" poems
The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain’s side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.
3.7k
I walked into a sunset that did not belong to me,
Its vivid colours burning across the Mediterranean Sea.
In a fragile, elusive moment of composure
I gazed at the choppy sea moving closer
To the rugged, pebbly, rocky shore
Where I stood alone against the Rock.
The Rock of Gibraltar watched with a smile
As the turbulent Med pulsating with life
Scattered its waves against the strand,
And the sapphire waters kissed the ancient land.
The stormy sea embraced the coast
With fierceness intangible as a ghost.
The air vibrated with a taste of freedom,
With barely audible words of wisdom
That travelled across the centuries
To fill the tangy air with memories.
The voices from the past enveloped the Rock
In an alluringly mythical, protective cloak.
I gathered the strength I drew from the Rock;
Fears discarded, the resolve growing strong,
I walked the Med Steps to the very top
Against a dazzlingly splendid backdrop
Of the breathtaking views of the bay,
Basking in the aura of fears thrown away.
Intoxicated by the beauty, hungry for more,
I was feeling elated to the very core.
The fear of heights temporarily conquered,
The contentment felt almost awkward.
Suddenly, the world seemed a different place:
Offering the nature's graceful embrace.
As the starry night slowly descended,
In my solitude, I felt protected
By the mighty Rock standing tall and grand
Guarding the ancient, immemorial land.
Copyright: Nara Hodge 2018
Jul 23, 2018
Jul 23, 2018 at 1:31 PM UTC
YOU waves, though you dance by my feet like children
at play,
Though you glow and you glance, though you purr and
you dart;
In the Junes that were warmer than these are, the waves
were more gay,
When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.
The herring are not in the tides as they were of old;
My sorrow! for many a creak gave the creel in the-cart
That carried the take to Sligo town to be sold,
When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.
And ah, you proud maiden, you are not so fair when
his oar
Is heard on the water, as they were, the proud and apart,
Who paced in the eve by the nets on the pebbly shore,
When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.
3.3k
Gone is the long, long winter night;
Look, my beloved one!
How glorious, through his depths of light,
Rolls the majestic sun!
The willows, waked from winter's death,
Give out a fragrance like thy breath--
The summer is begun!
Ay, 'tis the long bright summer day:
Hark, to that mighty crash!
The loosened ice-ridge breaks away--
The smitten waters flash.
Seaward the glittering mountain rides,
While, down its green translucent sides,
The foamy torrents dash.
See, love, my boat is moored for thee,
By ocean's weedy floor--
The petrel does not skim the sea
More swiftly than my oar.
We'll go, where, on the rocky isles,
Her eggs the screaming sea-fowl piles
Beside the pebbly shore.
Or, bide thou where the poppy blows,
With wind-flowers frail and fair,
While I, upon his isle of snows,
Seek and defy the bear.
Fierce though he be, and huge of frame,
This arm his savage strength shall tame,
And drag him from his lair.
When crimson sky and flamy cloud
Bespeak the summer o'er,
And the dead valleys wear a shroud
Of snows that melt no more,
I'll build of ice thy winter home,
With glistening walls and glassy dome,
And spread with skins the floor.
The white fox by thy couch shall play;
And, from the frozen skies,
The meteors of a mimic day
Shall flash upon thine eyes.
And I--for such thy vow--meanwhile
Shall hear thy voice and see thy smile,
Till that long midnight flies.
2.6k
I am grounded by my own ignorance, he thought, and here, by the sheer complexity of things. This pebble at my feet seems the very centre of a radius - of marks and pathways. Possibilities. It is a thing that connects itself with me. It is very early, before the sun has touched the horizon’s sky.
I recall a poem telling of the perfection of pebbles, their being equal to themselves, mindful of their limits, filled exactly with a pebbly meaning, with a scent which does not remind one of anything, does not frighten anything away, does not arouse desire, its ardour and coldness full of dignity.
I now remember another poem, portraying a pebble placed in a child’s hand, picked up on a pebble ridge. A pebble to place in the pocket where we finger it until it becomes warm. Its shape and certainty is firm and sure. It consoles us. And, as we change and decay, it remains lodged with us: a thing that contains nothing save the mystery of life.
And there is a long prose poem devoted to the pebble. It starts at the beginning of time itself with a condensed cosmogony, describing the formation of the first rock as an allegory of The Fall. It ventures through the expulsion of life, to cooling, to those large tectonic plates, and all the way down to the pebble itself, or, as the poet says, the "kind of stone that I can pick it up and turn it over in my hand". Time is everywhere in this poem: Stone as Time, where the great wheel of stone rolls ever on as plant life, animals, gases and liquids revolve quite rapidly in their cycles of dying. Take this as the poet’s view of humanity: to consider all things as unknown, and to begin again right from the beginning.
We need to take the side of things, he thought. Here, this pebble is time, and where this pebble lies, with its radii of marks, seems at the very centre of things. It was brought anonymously by the tide one stormy night to lie at our feet, and looks at us with a calm and very clear eye.
Jul 7, 2013
Jul 7, 2013 at 1:49 AM UTC
COME round me, little childer;
There, don't fling stones at me
Because I mutter as I go;
But pity Moll Magee.
My man was a poor fisher
With shore lines in the say;
My work was saltin' herrings
The whole of the long day.
And sometimes from the Saltin' shed
I scarce could drag my feet,
Under the blessed moonlight,
Along thc pebbly street.
I'd always been but weakly,
And my baby was just born;
A neighbour minded her by day,
I minded her till morn.
I lay upon my baby;
Ye little childer dear,
I looked on my cold baby
When the morn grew frosty and clear.
A weary woman sleeps so hard!
My man grew red and pale,
And gave me money, and bade me go
To my own place, Kinsale.
He drove me out and shut the door.
And gave his curse to me;
I went away in silence,
No neighbour could I see.
The windows and the doors were shut,
One star shone faint and green,
The little straws were turnin round
Across the bare boreen.
I went away in silence:
Beyond old Martin's byre
I saw a kindly neighbour
Blowin' her mornin' fire.
She drew from me my story --
My money's all used up,
And still, with pityin', scornin' eye,
She gives me bite and sup.
She says my man will surely come
And fetch me home agin;
But always, as I'm movin' round,
Without doors or within,
Pilin' the wood or pilin' the turf,
Or goin' to the well,
I'm thinkin' of my baby
And keenin' to mysel'.
And Sometimes I am sure she knows
When, openin' wide His door,
God lights the stats, His candles,
And looks upon the poor.
So now, ye little childer,
Ye won't fling stones at me;
But gather with your shinin' looks
And pity Moll Magee.
2.3k
Teetles tuppled storpidly, along the clurby path
Her toes gribbed at the plirky sand
When she lumbled swanuously round the ragthall pebbly wrath
Her stlilting head tipped back as she breathed the roopled frand
She trippered toinulously pausing at the gurgil streef
To drink slaverously from a Burbore skinned flask
Sea shells stolen plumberlingly from the Briley Heef
Dripped from her pockets as she svointered on the shubbled crask
And in her furling hand she snatched a Stoodle,
Feathered little spine smuffled from the wind so grabbily,
Its beak produced a little snawdoodle
And she laughed so jorbid and trabbily
“Little one, a seashell for you”
She exclaimed and stooped to pluck a sleemish one
And in the Stoodle horpled with a gentle twoo
And she set it in the blurkish sea, spinning loorfilly in the sun
With a sudden shloop
both shell and Stoodle were ****** under
so she stood waiting peering into the gloop
as the Stoodle sunk into the murky punder
Then up the Stoodle popped with sloopish swriss
But Stoodle it was no more, instead a brilly Havergrath
With grey silk back and wuverbul muscles twriss
A smarmy smile upon its jarby grath
And she smiled back at him
A korky, vubblious thing
And he flipped through the air with krim
As one only a Havergrath can bring
--Lily
Dec 23, 2012
Dec 23, 2012 at 10:07 AM UTC
Adobe skinned mimicry of light,
Piece of pebbly lunar surface fallen
To misty ******* reverse panoply,
Spiny spar of stellar tapestry
Nimbly navigating mortared limbs
In sultry sea-cellar ballet,
Rocky roofed conspirator of clams,
Swarthy pirate, silent smithy of shells.
Aug 13, 2010
Aug 13, 2010 at 10:12 AM UTC
Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs
No school of long experience, that the world
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares,
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood
And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm
To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here
Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men
And made thee loathe thy life. The primal curse
Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth,
But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to guilt
Her pale tormentor, misery. Hence, these shades
Are still the abodes of gladness; the thick roof
Of green and stirring branches is alive
And musical with birds, that sing and sport
In wantonness of spirit; while below
The squirrel, with raised paws and form *****
Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the shade
Try their thin wings and dance in the warm beam
That waked them into life. Even the green trees
Partake the deep contentment; as they bend
To the soft winds, the sun from the blue sky
Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene.
Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems to enjoy
Existence, than the winged plunderer
That ***** its sweets. The massy rocks themselves,
And the old and ponderous trunks of prostrate trees
That lead from knoll to knoll a causey rude
Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark roots,
With all their earth upon them, twisting high,
Breathe fixed tranquillity. The rivulet
Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed
Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks,
Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice
In its own being. Softly tread the marge,
Lest from her midway perch thou scare the wren
That dips her bill in water. The cool wind,
That stirs the stream in play, shall come to thee,
Like one that loves thee nor will let thee pass
Ungreeted, and shall give its light embrace.
1.6k
A mist blanketed the forest,
so low and dense we could barely see
through it, but we kept on digging
the hole. We had no other choice,
and there was nowhere else to go.
The onyx lake pebbly beach
intimate boat cheap beer
and jokes loud motor running
The smell of earth and petrichor
dispersed her rancid miasma.
I felt ruefully relieved, but
the hole was almost complete.
Tiny eyes peered at us through
the dark, through the leaves,
from the trees, but not a chirp
or tweet was aired. They remained
silent as we did our deed.
The wet street we came in on
truck cabin nail gun hidden
in the cooler her stupidly
wonderful laugh
awful moonlight
It was finished. We climbed out,
and I grasped her ankles. We
swung her and let go. The wind
passed through with a low groan.
Burble gracious grin
looking up at the stars
snap yelp the start of a cry
another snap of air escaping
swollen tongue
widened eyes
The putrid miasma disappeared,
buried along with everything
else. And then we left. The sun
crept out from behind the
mountains as we walked away.
The birds began their daily dance.
Nov 17, 2018
Nov 17, 2018 at 11:08 PM UTC
Draw a narrow road with a man standing in the distance,
The sun is setting and his shadow moves for an instance;
What is this symbolizing? What does this mean?
In the background, sea, salted waters, filled with chlorine.
Don't get too caught up in this life-like dream,
Almost real, but all too extreme.
Painted man walks up to you and speaks,
"I am None, I represent the Freaks."
Sun stops setting, just stands right there,
Gleaming rays, upon it a face appears.
Chlorine waters turn into rough seas,
Winter's come and the painted man freeze.
The winds so strong seem to play you a song;
Not such a nice tune, and ever so long.
The faced sun runs away from the cold,
Winter ruled all, all it controlled.
Pebbly beaches, umbrellas at shore,
Painted man alive and the sun rise once more.
The cold got heatstroke, the seas all calmed down,
The painted man, from the sun he turned brown.
Leaves falling down, that season has come,
Trees so bare, no more growing plumb.
Final season, makes you so sad;
Drawing leaves you from your sketchpad.
Aug 30, 2012
Aug 30, 2012 at 8:50 AM UTC
I want to be captured just as I am right now
My worries and trials show in my face where before there was only the sweet depth of young hope
The path I have to walk, with its forks marked Mother and Therapist and Citizen of the World loom before me, their pebbly grounds flat
If you look carefully, you see their convergence in the two furrows above my eyebrows
Where is the sepia portrait of me? Everyone has one
That is how I know my mother’s unfamiliarity with married life
It was written in the way she stood next to my father in their honeymoon photo, a bride not yet used to her own body
That is how I know my great-uncle enjoyed bedding his shrill wife
The lines of their bodies compliant in the picnic photo.
Whoever took those photos knew what they were capturing; the intent was there to solidify that moment, in bitterness, in wondernment, as evidence
It was proof they knew the subjects, the characters whose stories bubbled beneath veneers.
Who’s going to take my picture?
Jan 25, 2013
Jan 25, 2013 at 9:35 PM UTC
I'd like to see some other measurements-
The ones where humans don't slope away
Toward the floor; where teeth and skull plates
Aren't widened and flattened into floorboards,
And where the secret grottoes of abbeys
Aren't made silent, by kneeling on cushioned flesh
Where we stretched our eardrums out
To become acoustic ceilings
We left in the smooth, pebbly gossip
As points of interest
To direct the secular gaze upward
Leaving our agoraphobic thoughts
Stranded out there,
Trying to cross that vast expanse
Of white nothingness
The problem of forever
Is that it always ends
Just one octave
Past a plaintive heartbeat
I put on the clothing of monotonous atmospheres
Because there wasn't anything else to wear
And because I like the nice familiarity
Of warm sun, and cooling moon-
All the twilight seasons of sensation,
Of when you could fall eternally,
Knowing that a temperamental universe
Still owned every atom of your being
And Time's scarred fingers endlessly screeching
On the blackboard
Of all your faded significance
Aug 13, 2010
Aug 13, 2010 at 1:44 PM UTC
By S E T
Those Shelter Island nights,
When the air hung sweet and salty
and the shell-laced, pebbly sand
still felt jagged against your toughened feet,
Inviting and profound
You walked with your best guy friend,
Tawny, and burnished from the summer
side jobs, gap tooth and lightly nasal
desperately wanting not to hear his yearning
paens to your best, most glamorous friend
lamenting her leaving
Who'd been up for half the month,
She of the glittering auburn hair
and TV roles, and heartthrob drummer brother,
and even then, deep, throaty laugh,
Wondering if she'd go for hick, Long Island him,
Instead, to feel his teen-age muscled lips
bear down on yours, even if you fidgeted
with desire and uncertainty, half-longing to bolt
Never letting on that second fiddle
was not your instrument of choice
Crossing the warm road to (pinch yourself)
board Chuck's yacht
The only one you knew who had a yacht,
not a grand affair, with modest galley and monk-like sleeper
but a yacht no less,
And drink the bootlegged verboten
beer delicious, slightly acrid,
Stealing away, out the kitchen door
after the small stones clattered against your sleeping window,
Your signal to renounce the troubled house
for a midnight ride down paradise cove.
Aug 28, 2016
Aug 28, 2016 at 5:15 PM UTC
I finally got to walk alone in nature once again,
And experienced that longed for peace and stillness,
And space between my ears,
Other than tinnitus’ static,
And tinged with sadness and grief of course,
And short lived till my brain kicked back in.
But for awhile it was bliss.
I heard the birds sing,
The waves reverberate against the pebbly beach,
I felt the wind gently caressing my cheek, and
The warmth of the sun just before it dipped below the cliff,
And saw the rise of the near full moon shining out like a beacon
To lost travellers the world over.
Not even the sound of voices in the distance disturbed my stillness
In that moment.
Dec 26, 2023
Dec 26, 2023 at 11:11 AM UTC
let’s just swim out into the lake
and never return to the pebbly shore.
May 19, 2014
May 19, 2014 at 2:38 AM UTC
You woo me deep
into the ecstasy of your pristine chasteness...
where dry leaves of Aspen and Beech and Birch
sussurate to the music of a lazy breeze,
where Hummingbirds
**** in frenzy
nectar from the orange glees
of the flame-of-the-forest trees,
where Hawthorns
lure the breeze
to weave its vibrance
in their domes of green glory,
where shrunken streams
bask in their white pebbly flourish.
Like an enchantress,
you lure me to the depth of your
rapturous bliss!
To say farewell, my heart pains.
I leave a beat of my heart
to ramble with the roving breeze
perennially in your alluring meadows!
Sep 18, 2018
Sep 18, 2018 at 5:58 AM UTC
The best 4 lines that I ever read:
The stone is a perfect creature,
equal to itself,
mindful of it's limits
and filled exactly with a pebbly meaning.
(Zbigniew Herbert).
Aug 11, 2010
Aug 11, 2010 at 7:31 AM UTC
You think, but you don't think when you walk
step by step, heel over heel, toe to toe, forward in the forest.
You think, cause you can't think about much else
'cept your next step, its the step that comes next.
Provided there's a path, trek steadily
**** the hills, engrain your heels
in the plush, pebbly mud, positioned sneakily
under the leaves.
Presence, breath, refresh,
relieve, unwind, unconscious,
maybe even semi-aware of the subconscious,
slow down, speed up,
listen.
Hear!
Understand, demand [passively] your peace,
your piece of the land.
And you're a piece of the land.
Mar 8, 2014
Mar 8, 2014 at 7:16 PM UTC
His tired jump boots filled up with pebbly sand.
Foot followed foot at a weary leaden pace
as he trudged on the sunset wind swept strand.
Fatigue drew lines upon his sunburned face.
A sad girl sat twirling a blazing brand.
She dreamed the furthest birth of nascent stars.
Heavy wood crutches rested at her side.
Her withered white legs were trapped by steel bars
He silently approached her as she softly cried.
Pain was offered for pain as lonely eye caught eye.
He wept mute as she sat mourning in a grief unspoiled.
Their tender psychic boundaries touched and then recoiled.
A wave washed gently over his broken tongues
as a hungry purple sea consumed the sun.
Jan 19, 2015
Jan 19, 2015 at 9:02 PM UTC
The serpentine and ageless liquid
mercurial possessed snake
eternally swallowed
since the beginning of time
one unquenchable thirst to gorge and slake
slurping up an icy cold mountainous pebbly shake
yet fresh as an irish spring
using thy tongue o gaelic spake
then tumbling down into the cavernous abyss
subsequently carving
a deep criss cross patchwork
across the rock hard rugged topography
like the handiwork of some invincible force
commandeering a humungous rake
affixing legendary signature
quasi-indelible grooves
only for the near indomitable
chiseled masterpiece
to be erased, twisted then wrenched
by that natural landscape altering phenomena
identified as an earth quake
creating a fresh tabula rasa to begin anew
inviting waters from on high to carve
from the ebbing and flowing millennial currents
which eventually find a more direct course
beginning as trickling creek
swells from winter rains
and thence in summer while the sun doth bake
when flora blooms and fauna prance
the firmament then abandons
bent elbow oxbow lake
as a former bend in the river.
May 26, 2017
May 26, 2017 at 11:56 PM UTC
with enormous expectations
like those of being a noted artist
from the suburban sidewalks of
the ***** streets of Michigan
ended up in the Air Force
the hair cut was the worst
had my hair down to my ***
exited with it barely over my ears
I wanted to get educated find
Something, I didn't know what,
in society and attended college
one semester
I would dedicate myself fully
the next party too hard,
so it took me
eight years
to get a Bachelor's degree
by then had two kids
a wife and an extended family
of her mom grandma, sister
aunts papas all of us in a house together
when I got a paying job finally
she didn't want to leave all the
unhired help the unpaid diaper changers
and she stayed there
I moved on and it tore my ***** into
small pebbly stones all shrunken up
all alone in a big house
bent my nights up with a tab
at the bar and loose women and
giggly ******
sometimes thinking most times not
I gave up then found a new she
and when I did the ex came crawling back and
I admit I used her
revenge *** is some of the best
I got ****** bereft of feelings for a long time
had a callous heart I found a few
years laters again
on the side of a small town
called Clayhatchee.
where the streets are
repaved and the dogs
run free
along side me old
all keeping pace with my
strides of going nowhere
ever again
dreamily
Jul 16, 2017
Jul 16, 2017 at 10:12 PM UTC
the gray horizon looms ahead
pebbly shorelines with yellowy sand
a gloomy gull walks alone
for sadness he has long since known
a dot of white against the beach
his empty home is hard to reach
a thorny nest of string and branch
since gull’s abode has to withstand
the hungry breeze and angered seas
the rain, the birds, and tipsy trees
yet through it all he makes it home
saturnine smile and lunch in tow
- c.c.d.
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 2:12 AM UTC
*Tonight the sea is still
a moon hammocks on
a tide in its peak
on the coast reflected
shadowy in balmy breeze
a sentinel rain forest
lays watch on tranquil bay
Tonight come to your window
savour sea spray in the air
feast on the sounds of night
and waves lapping upon the shore
while pebbly tapping keeps time
no sadness prevails in this symphony
as the moon reconciles land and sea*
●○
°
Nov 24, 2015
Nov 24, 2015 at 5:43 AM UTC