Where the Shore Listens

The ocean…

Be not a body, but an uncharted mind,

fluid with memory,

salted with compassion,

liquid thoughts cresting in waves that caress the sand.

The dolphin…

Arcs like a question mark over the horizon,

 its intelligence not in words,

 but in the way it reads the currents

 like Braille on the skin of the world.

 It teaches joy and  how to leap

 even when the tide pulls.

The whale…

Ancient and deliberate,

sings in octaves that bend time.

Its voice is a castle built from breath and longing,

echoing through the marrow of the sea.

The shells…

Migrate like pilgrims,

carried by tides that know no borders.

Each spiral a map of where silence has been,

each crack a story of pressure and grace.

Pebbles…

Once jagged with youth, grinds themselves smooth on the whetstone of patience.

They dream of flight,

not wings,

but the brief liberation of a child’s hand

and the hush of a skip across a glassy ocean

that holds its breath for miracles.

The sandpiper…

Punctuates the scene with its staccato curiosity,

a semicolon on legs,

pausing between waves to ask questions only the wind can answer.

A tsunami…

Its hush so deep it feels like the earth has forgotten to breathe.

The seagull lifts, not in panic, but prophecy.

Its wings slice the sky like a warning bell no one hears.

The tsunami does not roar.

It inhales.

It gathers the shore like a mother reclaiming her scattered children,

umbrellas,

footprints,

the laughter of yesterday.

It pulls back what was borrowed:

the sand’s secrets,

the pebble’s ambition,

the shells’ slow pilgrimage.

And in that retreat,

the ocean reminds us this is where all life began,

in the deep,

in the dark,

in the quiet intelligence of water learning how to hold

and how to set free its messages.