Chanson de mer
The exuberant power
of the natural world…
Chanson de mer
I am the rock.
I am the island.
I am the glistening boulder at the waterline.
I am the sharp-edged, flinty fragment,
tossed by the blue-green surge,
scattered by the stinging wind,
collected once, and dropped, by a child.
I am the ancient stratum exposed to the faintly salty air.
I am the blunt face of the heaved-up, broken stone,
I am the silent witness
to the everlasting crash and song of the sea,
I stand against the tumbling, roiling crests that
dash to me,
break on me,
climb my height,
die at my foot,
and rise, vaulting, surging, crashing, singing,
to grandly break on me again, again…
the lyric, rhythms, chords the same
as at the last or next millennial dawn.
I am the rock. The sea endlessly sings to me.
Good. Enough.
Tarry.
Listen.
September 15, 2011
“Chanson de mer” is about the ocean and the coast. It is a respectful imagination of the exuberant power of the natural world around us. I think that’s the best kind of description of a poem about nature. I wrote it on a cloudy afternoon on the massive rock formation that dominates the south coast of Conanicut Island in the Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. Jamestown, at the southern tip of the island, is the home of Beavertail State Park. I’d love to go back.
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Book review: Shawshank Redemption
A world I do not want to know…
by Stephen King
My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2017 All rights reserved.
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Take a few minutes on this website to read: my poetry in free verse and 5-7-5 format—nature poems, love poems, poems about grandchildren, and a spectrum of other topics—written in a way that, I hope, makes it possible for you to know, as precisely as possible, what’s going on in my mind and in my imagination; thoughtful book reviews that offer an exceptional critique of the book instead of a simple book summary; examinations of history that did and didn’t happen; examples of my love affair with words; reflections on the quotations, art, and wisdom of famous and not-so-famous people, and my occasional ingenuous comments on politics and human nature.
Your comments on my poems, book reviews and other posts are welcome.
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He’s not so famous for his last (uncompleted) novel, St Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England (1897). It was finished from Stevenson’s notes by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, a talented British writer.
