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Tide Pool (Free verse) by middenHeap
A stone was in my path, flecked
with sea gold, with wave-rounded
corners, with
unexplainable smooth holes
channelling through the heart of it,
speckled with tiny black and purple living shells.
It was that
which I stopped to examine,
squatting on my heels
'till the shadow of the rock
lengthened to the edge of the waves,
trying to puzzle out a meaning in the movement
of the tiny purple-legged crabs
living in the lee of the rock,
in the waving slow tentacles
of the fleshy thing in the deep part
of the pool: waving, still, waving, still
anemone, anemone
anemone,
Laughing at the lazy clown-faced
fish hovering in the midst of the fleshy arms
like some kind of sex,
'till the shadows vanished in a general
darkness, and I stayed there still,
listening to the sea
which had come up to the pool
and the rock, once
and gone back again while I lingered.
And while I waited there
an odd man in overalls
came by with a bucket and shone
a strange dim light (purple!) past my back
and the pool
and the rock exploded
in cold neon fire, purple, intense blue-white
and cold, cold neon orange, a dozen times
more moving things than I
had ever noticed all day in the sun.
The man moved on with his light,
I saw him place some slowly-kicking
glowing thing into that bucket of darkness
and finally I rose and wandered home.
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