Photograph by Chris Sims
This photograph brought out the romantic in many of you and a sense of loss and longing in others. The winner is Love by Dulen Gogoi. Congratulations to Dulen and many thanks to all who entered and voted.
Poem 1
The Colours of the Stones on the Tidemark
What crafts the stony beach?
So high they reach the pebbles,
It’s hard to run along a beach like this.
Each step, you’re picking up the weight
the stones in sequence for safekeeping, a coastline.
By hands in the tide, the dark ones go at the bottom
they’ve got secrets of former shorelines.
The shades of grey the stony beach.
Johanna Boal
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Poem 2
Love
waves rise on my sea,
she- the sailor.
I taste the blues,
it is wine…
On a no man’s land
now we are together,
and
on its shore
new pearls of love gather…
Dulen Gogoi
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Poem 3
The Endless Sea
The endless sea
wraps silken arms of softness
holding, supporting, transporting
to a world of safety and strength.
The shifting sands
murmur messages
of warm summer days
moving in step with each other.
The taste of the spray,
and the salt on the wind,
shared in a kiss
of future togetherness.
The scent of the sea,
its freedom and fearlessness,
far off places to
saviour and search for.
We see them alone
and hope they stay strong,
as the sea to the shore
through the storm to the calm.
Angie Butler
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Poem 4
Portland two
On Chesil Beach,
pebbles squeak
when unsteady feet grind
down the slope
to skim waves.
The shallow boats ignored,
ready for tomorrow’s launch
into a grim grey dawn.
It’s a hard life on the Isle
rock and sea in constant battle
a few miles out.
The Portland race a graveyard
for small fishing boats.
The tourists kiss and untangle
their hair before they turn,
head up the shifting shingle,
struggle to reach the car
before the lash of a storm.
Vicki Morley
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Poem 5
The art and science of love and the sea.
Like scientists we love,
Playing on the sea-shore of our lives among the smooth pebbles
While the great ocean of love’s truth lies undiscovered before us.
Like poets we love,
Going down to the skies and seas of our loneliness,
Running out the boats of love’s dreams.
Like engineers we love,
Constructing for our lives structures to float us
Over the fathoms as they foam and surge.
Like lovers we love,
Taking, as if from the sea, light to our hearts,
Our kisses tanged, the boats of our lives upturned on love’s shore.
Michael Docker
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Poem 6
Dreamboat
I launched my message in a bottle
on a whim,
never dreaming that four women
would answer my plea,
would bathe off the island rock
where the waves wedged
my bottle and my words,
waterproof words,
save for my tears that fell
and smudged the word “love”
as though it were a phantom
of my imagination,
slippery as seaweed
and elusive to the touch
You are the last of four friends
to row out to meet me here
With the first three, I walked
the beaches of bright dreams,
and danced on the sands of hope,
but I see the ocean in your eyes
and even though we don’t speak
the same language,
I can feel our hearts beating
on the shores of eternity
Clarissa McFairy
