Poem for You

Selected from the National Poetry Day competition Post a Poem.
To see the poems previously published on the theme of Water click here

Waves I, II and III
By Martin Battey

Waves

In the certainty of youth

We stand recklessly

Upon sea walls
Smiling at the fate

Of waves
Dying blind and white-haired
On the stones below

But when the walls have fallen
And smooth beaches
Slip once more beneath the waters
Of an unknown time
It is we who will be stone

And the waves still young

Waves II

Awakened by the moon
The waves return forever
In triumph to the shore

While elsewhere an eternal city
Sleeps beneath the quiet fields
And is no more

Waves III

Along a distant beach
Waves boil and vanish soundlessly
Their starlit crests
Curving away
To the smoking disc
Of a phantom moon

Somewhere
A young girl standing in the sea
Wrings crystalline drops
From a sheaf
Of jet-black hair

For one moment
She is a flicker of movement
Seen from a ship passing far out to sea
Then diving suddenly beneath the waves

Is gone

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Page last updated: 18th February 2014