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| Photo of author in his book The Way the Rain Works, Sable Books |
[First published in The Way the Rain Works (Sable Books, 2015) and republished here by permission of the author.]
The jetty starts in a barely perceptible
uplifting of sand and extends
stone by stone into a jagged hem
of breakers that undulate in the distance.
To build a jetty requires no complex
architecture, just the exhaustive
piling one boulder on top of another,
too massive for the sea to dislodge.
How can this be the place we
watched minnows play in the sandy
inlet, the point we rounded,
the dunes where we opened
our hearts on an afternoon of wind
and sea oats? The jetty alters the inlet
utterly. Rough granite pebbles have
rolled ashore. Sandpipers peck
around them, footprints blurred
by the waves. A sign in the dunes
declares the Wildlife Reserve off-limits
to humans, be they ill-mannered,
contrary or curious, but look how easily
the mother tern makes her way to the hidden
nest back of the boundary dunes, a glittering
in her bill’s black sheen, a minnow.
| Copyright © 2018 by Ralph Earle |
This perfect poem confirms me in my own sense that beauty, truth, peace lie in the little things of life, and that those things aren’t little.
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