Sea Change

shore to shore
an ocean rolls its silence up
conceals its secret places

from us

scuttling on hard dry land
eroding more than rain on stone
more than wind-scour
or rivers meandering

abrasion

broken things we drown
after one brief touch
our moments of possession
poured down a billion drains

wasted effort

islands drowned by tide
the sea’s ebb and flow
a cresting surge
risen too high

but whatever

is out of sight
is out of our minds
our error is ignorance
never evidence

of undoing

crabs scuttle away
lost now in seaweed
the flash of startled fish
the wet beat of change

our clock of waves

© BH, 2019

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Looking for news, I found this…

… and updated it six months later. On re-reading the first draft (as I now call it) seemed too ‘teenage’ or so I was told!

Forbes
Rethinking Our Oceans: Investing In The Blue Economy
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/01/26/rethinking-our-oceans-investing-in-the-blue-economy/#54e564fe3531

I heard Jonathan Copley, discussing his work on ‘Blue Planet II’, describe the ocean depths as an alien world which, as a human he realised, was his world. Most of the planet’s life is in there and we know so little about it even yet. And we have taken it for granted and savaged it in our ignorance.