SEASHELLS

Seashells
Humble shells of the sea
Each seems to be still alive and staring at me
In its matchless symmetry-
Like the wondrous beauty of a painting
A tender poem written with poignancy
Not of life’s sorrows but joys
For celebration –each is like a happy Mozartian symphony
Such perfection in a tiny manifestation
Natura in minimis maxima-
The envy of  Michelangelo or Da Vinci
Seashells—nature’s glorious gifts by far.

Seashells
Always remind me of happy childhood days
Lucky finds—spotted often in half -buried golden sand
Proudly displayed in a jar---I won every classmate’s praise.

Seashells
Tell of the sea’s unknown stories
Events that had stretched through millions of centuries
When you spot one on the shore, readily
Pick it up as a treasure----contemplate upon its profound mystery.

when i was a boy,
i collected seashells.
i had the most beautiful collection
when i was a boy.

i dreamt of seashells
and what i dreamt was beside
me every morning of everday
when i was a boy.

i had red ones and blue ones
white ones and rounds ones
ones of beauty and of majesty
when i was a boy.

the world marvelled at my collection
the world coveted my collection
i had the most beautiful seashell collection
when i was a boy.

one day i looked out through a window
and saw a boy walking along the beach
he picked up the plainest of seashells
and smiled
i raged and raged and raged
for forty days and forty nights
i raged
when i was a boy.

No two seashells are the same;
but then, to be invariable would be a shame.
To be unique is a gift you see,
to be you is the best way to be.

All seashells are grouped together in the sea and onshore,
their differences are irrelevant - their worth is the same at the core.
Some are able to float away from distress,
while others merely sink under the pressure I must confess.

Some are captivating and beautiful beyond compare,
while some are unpropitious with signs of wear and tear.
Yet despite their differences each one has an admirer,
and whether whole or broken each one is a survivor.

No two seashells are the same, it's true -
nor are two humans invariable - let this message get through.
To be unique is a gift you see,
to be you is the best way to be.

During youth I was quite the collector
of ocean ******'s annealed sandcastles
Though the hosts inside could not be cheaper,
their fleshy coats were worth all the hassles

Content I was amassing worn seashells;
monthly did this fine collection accrue
Though furnished, barren felt those wooden shelves,
as even pearls are lesser than a jewel

Still, the sand was warm; the waves were soothful
and regardless of what hollowness struck,
the beach granted a chance to feel fruitful
so long as one had either skill or luck

Alone was I, but daresay not lonely,
but I was not merry until married.

We picked the seashells on the shore,
You hear them whisper in your ears,
I always love to hear you share what they speak,
Their words with different voices,
I always thought you just pretend,
So I pretended to understand,
Now you are far
Beyond the horizon that we see
Whenever we watch the sun wake and sleep,
I picked a seashell on the shore
And hear it whisper in my ear,
I hear your voice saying I love you.

And she lingered in his heart,
Like the voice of the sea, that stayed for an eternity in the ears of seashells that lay on a sandy shore.  
Her breath stayed on his skin,
Hitting him every time harder than the last,
As if the waves' foam, slowly sinking in the damp sand,
Lingered for a lifetime on the surface.
Nothing but beautiful seashells remained
As the storm took away serenity of that golden sand.
Of those perfect waves.

seashells
line my bare shelves
barely--line my bare walls
collecting emptiness to fill
my house

(C)2000, Christos Rigakos

Sands near the sea

Fill my mind

Like beaches

While storms tear

Through my happiness

And destroy my smile

Until there is nothing

But sand and seashells

Near waves in my eyes

The shells are singing
holy songs now—oceans whistle through
their concert holes. ‘Holes drilled by predators,’
the seashore sings to me.

And I’m reminded there’s
so much more ancient than man.
So much that can never be written down,
for words are the limitations of our knowledge

—not its end.
And there should be something more
but really, how does one write what happened
with the seashells whistling by the seashore?

Getting out from the waves
She walked away to the rice bran haze
As the summer heat drove the sands mad
I knew what she had gone for.

She would hunt it like a child any day
A few seashells if came her way
My skin burning and eyes dust borne
Moments all to herself she desired alone.

On the distant shoreline when she was a speck
Stirred me a tremor then a rumbling quake
What if so happens she is gone too far
Turned a sea nymph to return never!

The tides were falling weaving a lull
The sun slanted on the wings of gull
I rose up to find sand prints of her trail
She bloomed like a hope in her handful of shell!

The old man paints seashells
for all of the women he has loved.
He takes his husky for walks
along the beach, returning with
a bag of **** and a collection
of spirals and fans, still pregnant
with the whispers of the ocean.

By the window, he licks his brush
and steadies his nervous hands.
He will share a steak with the dog,
and wonder when the best company
became inanimate or at most; unspeaking.
He had long turned his back on Dylan
and Cohen, in favour of empty sound

and the rain hitting the tarp
in the garden. He recalls Diane
and the green of life in her poetry.
Louise, the blue of her moods and the sea.
Each woman had coloured his life
in hopeful hues, oh, and what a mess
he was in their absence.
(even the dog wouldn't sleep beside him)

The old man drew his last breath
when the silence became deafening.
When he realised he could not reclaim
memories through art, or through
the patient analysis of nature.
There was no shape or colour
that had not been created before.

"It's little things about you
I remember most,
as if you're the ocean
and these are seashells
I found along the coast."

If I listen carefully,
I can hear the lapping of the ocean tide.
The splish
              splash
                       of skipping rocks.

If I close my eyes,
I can feel the sun again.
The warmth my hands held
For those few seconds.

If I stop for a moment,
I can still find traces of those stolen moments.
Of that sweet summer
Trailing in the October breeze.

I lie in the sand under the palm tree
Sand between the toes, crashing in the sea.
I count the stars, for the seventh time now
With the moon out, I nearly forget how

My meals come few, and far in between.
Could the fish be sparser, so it would seem
There's so much time between my feasts to think
Ocean surrounds, yet not a drop to drink.

I ponder at the moon and recognize
How its hue reveals the deceit and lies
You, my misty moon, I remember you
When I saw you last, in agony, too.

Those I held dearest left me here to rot
To wander about, within pain and thought
To fend for myself and survive alone
And march ahead in bracing the unknown

I lie in wait tearing my own nails
Wondering what first will come, death or sails?
Until then, I'll forsake those who left me.
And draw closer to the sun whilst I be.

A rose in the high garden that you desire.
A wheel in the pure syntax of steel.
The mountain stripped of impressionist mist.
Greys looking out from the last balustrades.

Modern painters in their black studios,
Sever the square root's sterilized flower.
In the Seine's flood an iceberg of marble
freezes the windows and scatters the ivy.

Man treads the paved streets firmly.
Crystals hide from reflections' magic.
Government has closed the perfume shops.
The machine beats out its binary rhythm.

An absence of forests, screens and brows
Wanders the roof-tiles of ancient houses.
The air polishes its prism on the sea
and the horizon looms like a vast aqueduct.

Marines ignorant of wine and half-light,
decapitate sirens on seas of lead.
Night, black statue of prudence, holds
the moon's round mirror in her hand.

A desire for form and limit conquers us.
Here comes the man who sees with a yellow ruler.
Venus is a white still life
and the butterfly collectors flee.

Cadaqués, the fulcrum of water and hill,
lifts flights of steps and hides seashells.
Wooden flutes pacify the air.
An old god of the woods gives children fruit.

Her fishermen slumber, dreamless, on sand.
On the deep, a rose serves as their compass.
The ****** horizon of wounded hankerchiefs,
unties the vast crystals of fish and moon.

A hard diadem of white brigantines
wreathes bitter brows and hair of sand.
The sirens convince, but fail to beguile,
and appear if we show a glass of fresh water.

Oh Salvador Dalí, of the olive voice!
I don't praise your imperfect adolescent brush
or your pigments that circle those of your age,
I salute your yearning for bounded eternity.

Healthy soul, you live on fresh marble.
You flee the dark wood of improbable forms.
Your fantasy reaches as far as your hands,
and you savor the sea's sonnet at your window.

The world holds dull half-light and disorder,
in the foreground humanity frequents.
But now the stars, concealing landscapes,
mark out the perfect scheme of their courses.

The flow of time forms pools, gains order,
in the measured forms of age upon age.
And conquered Death, trembling, takes refuge
in the straightended circle of the present moment.

Taking your palette, its wing holds a bullet-hole,
you summon the light that revives the olive-tree.
Broad light of Minverva, builder of scaffolding,
with no room for dream and its inexact flower.

You summon the light that rests on the brow,
not reaching the mouth or the heart of man.
Light feared by the trailing vines of Bacchus,
and the blind force driving the falling water.

You do well to place warning flags
on the dark frontier that shines with night.
As a painter you don't wish your forms softened
by the shifting cotton of unforeseen  clouds.

The fish in its bowl and the bird in its cage.
You refuse to invent them in sea or in air.
You stylize or copy once you have seen,
with your honest eyes, their smal agile bodies.

You love a matter defined and exact,
where the lichen cannot set up its camp.
You love architecture built on the absent,
admitting the banner merely in jest.

The steel compass speaks its short flexible verse.
Now unknown islands deny the sphere.
The straight line speaks of its upward fight
and learned crystals sing their geometry.

Yet the rose too in the garden where you live.
Ever the rose, ever, our north and south!
Calm, intense like an eyeless staute,
blind to the underground struggle it causes.

Pure rose that frees from artifice, sketches,
and opens for us the slight wings of a smile
(Pinned butterfly that muses in flight.)
Rose of pure balance not seeking pain.
Ever the rose!

Oh Salvador Dalí of the olive voice!
I speak of what you and your paintings tell me.
I don't praise your imperfect adolescent brush,
but I sing the firm aim of your arrows.

I sing your sweet battle of Catalan lights,
you love of what might be explained.
I sing your heart astronomical, tender,
a deck of French cards, and never wounded.

I sing longing for statues, sought without rest,
your fear of emotions that wait in the street.
I sing the tiny sea-siren who sings to you
riding a bicycle of corals and conches.

But above all I sing a shared thought
that joins us in the dark and the golden hours.
It is not Art, this light that blinds our eyes.
Rather it is love, friendship, the clashing of swords.

Rather than the picture you patiently trace,
it's the breast of Theresa, she of insomniac skin,
the tight curls of Mathilde the ungrateful,
our friendship a board-game brightly painted.

May the tracks of fingers in blood on gld
stripe the heart of eternal Catalonia.
May stars like fists without falcons shine on you,
while your art and your life burst into flower.

Don't watch the water-clock with membranous wings,
nor the harsh scythe of the allegories.
Forever clothe and bare your brush in the air
before the sea peopled with boats and sailors.

Island can't stop sliding
even when dull pencils
stuck in sand push back
strong, even when your
toes are curling inward
and holding on tight

The sunburn highway is
crowded today and we're
stuck in traffic, caught
behind a particularly
thick cloud, compounding
beach  breezes and midday
shivering beneath towels

With sweaty hands clapping
beat and fast punches, the
overnight foliage blooms
and dies, laughing hard
in the bright room with no doors

i found you in the ocean
                                                                                   your eyes treading water
                                                                                       your hair lost gold
swimming out to sea
                                                                                        turning back once
                                                                                        to beckon me onward
i swam until my arms were too tired to move and
when i looked back i could no longer see the shore
                                                                                         you were waiting
and you broke me apart with your words
i nodded
breathless from the wound and exhaustion
my head turning toward the sky
and slipping below the waves
i watched the creatures of the deep glide by
seeing clearer than ever before
you put me together with your lips
and met me at the ocean floor

Words float in the air
They rearrange themselves into a sentence
form a picture of a train and roll away

Words shaped like balloons
They float away but will be back soon

Words hiding in a tree
Leaves fall to the ground and form sentences for me

Musical notes rearrange themselves on a scale
Fingers jumping from fret to fret
or dancing on the piano keys
These are some of the things I see

Ocean waves roll in and write on the sand
Once it just wrote, "I AM"
Seashells with words lie on the beach
In a sentence they realign
Thank you Lord for this beautiful mind

I want sunflowers
On my doorstep
And butterflies
In my hair

I want sand
Between my toes
And seashells
In my hand

I want raindrops
On my lips
And your breath
Against my skin

I want your fingers
Playing with my hair
And my knees
Going weak

I want the world
To stop
When you press
Your lips to mine

I want to see the sunset
In your arms
And the stars
To twinkle in your eyes

I want to be
The only girl you'll ever need
And for forever
To start with me

We wandered our gazes
to the semidarkness Illuminated
above our sight.

Looking at the allurement
that were now empty caskets
hanging on tombstones of lights,
clinging to there eventual demise.

Lying on the earth,
                             we felt at peace.
Knowing we were one day
to be woven within its fabric,
empty shells of pebbles lost in
a lake of timeless moments.

We would be seashells on its shores
gently corroding with each wave.
till we were grains of eternity
variations of us everywhere.

Looking upon each other,
our hands clasping like a
                 momentary fissure
sealing a grain of moments
                 between ourselves.

"Death is a moment where life
is cherry a falling slowly,

For we each hang on delicate
                                moments,
growing till we do as everything
does. Descending till we evaporate
from reflections and thought.

*"Where all echoes who've already past,

In a bedroom in small-town Pennsylvania,
you’ll find an unmade bed,
a pile of clothes on the floor—
clean but not folded,
open drawers and dusty shelves,
a desk in the corner of the room
with pictures laid across it.

When I caught my first fish at six.
I held it at arm’s length by the fishing line
to avoid the slimy scales,
a frown on my face from being forced
to sit silently in the cold.

When my family went to Marco Island,
my sister and I, sifting sand for the best seashells
in our matching swimsuits and hats.
Mom and dad’s fights forgotten in our fun.

High school graduation
posing with my best friend since first grade,
diplomas in one hand and an extra cap held between us
because not everyone survived all four years.

Move-in day at college,
sitting on my raised bed with a grey comforter
and two decorative pillows the color of cotton candy.
Sweat on my brow from southern humidity
and moving furniture without the help of a father.

The pictures are merely snapshots
that lack the full story.

How I learned what it meant for love to fall apart
when I was eight years old.
My sister warned me before it happened,
told me what a divorce was.
I mistook her for joking until they called us upstairs.
Dad cried when they told us, but mom held her tears
until the day he left. The sounds of her cries
escaping from behind a closed door.
“This doesn’t mean we don’t love each other.”
But that’s exactly what it meant.

How I was taught by my father that love is conditional,
and I repeatedly needed to prove myself
through good grades and unquestioning obedience.
Forced to stay home to spend time with the family,
sitting wordlessly on the couch while he watched TV.
Made guilty for wanting to spend time with friends
because that somehow meant that I was a bad daughter.
It’s funny—I never asked myself if he was a good father.

If you look harder at the bedroom,
you’ll find journals filled with bitter words,
screws from disassembled pencil sharpeners, loose razors, and Aquaphor,
food wrappers stuffed in hidden places,
a closet brimming with junk and pairs of shoes,
evidence of a story untold. Until you.