Asilomar: Tidepooling

A Great Wide Open

Strand
(not stranded).

GMB: "I Gave It Back To The Sea, To Dance In"

BEACHCOMBER

Monday I found a boot –
Rust and salt leather.
I gave it back to the sea, to dance in.

Tuesday a spar of timber worth thirty bob.
Next winter
It will be a chair, a coffin, a bed.

Wednesday a half can of Swedish spirits.
I tilted my head.
The shore was cold with mermaids and angels.

Thursday I got nothing, seaweed,
A whale bone,
Wet feet and a loud cough.

Friday I held a seaman’s skull,
Sand spilling from it
The way time is told on kirkyard stones.

Saturday a barrel of sodden oranges.
A Spanish ship
Was wrecked last month at The Kame.

Sunday, for fear of the elders,
I sit on my bum.
What’s heaven? A sea chest with a thousand gold coins. 

--George Mackay Brown


from The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown

A Bevy of Barnacles

Monastery Beach, Carmel, CA: June 20, 2011.

It's good to look through last year's photographs every so often.

Real Refreshment

Shell games.

Beachcombing on the Marin coast.

Asilomar Coast

A January afternoon: surgy, with a swell running, but sunny topside.

It's raining today, so I'm dream-beachcombing.

Sea-Green Stones

I found these two stones in tide pools away down south below Carmel many, many years ago.

Pining for North

My idea of a great beach.

(And, why wool sweaters and wetsuits were invented.)

Head north on Highway 1, but stop just south of Mendocino.

Photo: Damme Rocks, November 21, 2009.