It is very high here where the Pacific limbs blue between the islands among rocks scabbed with gray lichens. A gray crochet of lichens, the humble one-celled union of land and sea - alga and fungus - works stone. There is a photograph of the world, taken from outer space, that resembles this rock, a thing tender in its clasp of cloud and continent. Their gentle chisel of growth casts the rock to earth circle by circle, an expanding scab of life, and all their progeny are sand, as if the earth were an ever-after hourglass with this frail lace the only supplier of time. This pale marriage clasps the eternal and makes it tick, makes forever green hours of trees forever half-grown in the Pacific wind where the serene shadow of a gull lingers upon this thigh of tide. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...REVELATION by LOUIS UNTERMEYER THE LATE SINGER by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS GARRISON by AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT REMEMBERING NAT TURNER by STERLING ALLEN BROWN INSCRIPTION ON THE MONUMENT OF A NEWFOUNDLAND DOG by GEORGE GORDON BYRON TIRED TIM by WALTER JOHN DE LA MARE POMONA by WILLIAM MORRIS (1834-1896) THE HOUSE OF LIFE: 11. THE LOVE-LETTER by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI |