Today’s #verselove prompt from Susan was about communications. She focused on notes from the past. But with Earth Day on Monday, I am thinking about communications with our planet, with nature–how we can build a symbiosis between humans and our planet.

Prewriting and walking–they go together for me. As I walked the beach today in the cool spring sunshine, poetry began to form. What I haven’t learned yet is how to capture those fleeting thoughts while I am in motion. By the time i get home with my notebook, specifics have flown…I have to reach back in my mind to reconstruct, rethink, revive, and revise the nascent poetics.

Conversation with the Sea

I hear her whisper

hush shush

hush shush

an echo of my own heartbeat

a lullaby

lifting the weariness of the workweek

Shorebirds whistle

collaborators

“on your right” and “I have your back”

singing as they run and fly in unison

Sandy squelches

a give and take of my feet

and the wet sand

we play cat and mouse

who can catch who

Seagulls squawk

complaining

wanting more

impatient

annoyed and annoying

this is our beach

they squawk

She whispers

and I hear history

and her story

hush shush

hush shush

the sound of wombs, of new life

ancients, primordial

salty tears of the planet

Letters in the sand

message in a bottle

whispers and echoes

I’m listening