I am reminded of Monet's Cliff Walk at Pourville with his two young future stepdaughters painted above the sea walking at the edge on a sunny day. It was gifted to me by a boyfriend in Chicago and hung on my apartment wall until I gifted it to an incoming couple. The print disturbed me because I felt like I was cliff walking with him and I didn't want to take that feeling with me back to CA. This poem is fierce yet so gentle. The wind stroking the gull. I can feel it shaking me to my core but I don't feel afraid of how it could blow me apart from the inside out. This is a cleansing wind that fills my lungs with the breath of life. I can breathe more deeply after reading it. It depicts the Yin and Yang of life. No hidden agendas here. Raw and vulnerable. I love this poem.
I'm taken back to many different episodes of cliff standing amidst fierce and chilling winds:
The rocky outcrops of wildness—seemingly impossible amidst the incomprehensible vastness of Hong Kong, a place literally grown by filling harbors with debris.
Bluffs all along the truly wild (despite the inevitably futile best intentions of developers) coasts of California, temporarily welded together by the ancient deposits of eroding alluvial and sedimentary debris of which they are composed.
And that most seminal of all, the slightly raised glacial debris that is Cape Cod... the land of my grandfather's unpleasant home on Pleasant Bay where I would stand on a cool autumn day, almost too chilled to remain, yet too astounded by the astounding presence of the wind, water, and earth to return to the warmth and subtle discontent of a house built on the mysterious debris of trauma, still mostly invisible to a young boy awe-struck by the wonder of the world.
And how hard it can be and necessary to carry that fierceness with us
I am reminded of Monet's Cliff Walk at Pourville with his two young future stepdaughters painted above the sea walking at the edge on a sunny day. It was gifted to me by a boyfriend in Chicago and hung on my apartment wall until I gifted it to an incoming couple. The print disturbed me because I felt like I was cliff walking with him and I didn't want to take that feeling with me back to CA. This poem is fierce yet so gentle. The wind stroking the gull. I can feel it shaking me to my core but I don't feel afraid of how it could blow me apart from the inside out. This is a cleansing wind that fills my lungs with the breath of life. I can breathe more deeply after reading it. It depicts the Yin and Yang of life. No hidden agendas here. Raw and vulnerable. I love this poem.
I'm taken back to many different episodes of cliff standing amidst fierce and chilling winds:
The rocky outcrops of wildness—seemingly impossible amidst the incomprehensible vastness of Hong Kong, a place literally grown by filling harbors with debris.
Bluffs all along the truly wild (despite the inevitably futile best intentions of developers) coasts of California, temporarily welded together by the ancient deposits of eroding alluvial and sedimentary debris of which they are composed.
And that most seminal of all, the slightly raised glacial debris that is Cape Cod... the land of my grandfather's unpleasant home on Pleasant Bay where I would stand on a cool autumn day, almost too chilled to remain, yet too astounded by the astounding presence of the wind, water, and earth to return to the warmth and subtle discontent of a house built on the mysterious debris of trauma, still mostly invisible to a young boy awe-struck by the wonder of the world.
As one who has stood on the cliff during the storm — of the sea and me— I find the power of this piece comforting. Thank you.
This poem is new to me and how wonderful to be introduced to a new poem of yours! This is the heart for me:
"there is a fierceness here
that takes the shoulders of the soul
and shakes it..."
that makes sense of my love of rough seas and stone shores. Thank you!
I really just wanted to be on that cliff right now, with that energy and wildness, rather than the one I'm on.
This poem is incredibly beautiful. It appeals to all senses - eyes, smell, sound, touch.
Merci d’enrichir mon âme!