This month I’ve been participating in Laura Shovan’s 8th Annual February Daily Poem challenge. This year ‘s theme is “Water”, and each day someone posts a related prompt. We share our fledgling poetic responses on a Facebook page, with the emphasis on idea generation and drafting, not polishing.
Earlier this month Kara Laughlin shared a video and pictures of slurpee waves. Whoa! How did I ever miss these? When temperatures get so cold that ice crystals start forming in the ocean, you have slurpee waves. They’re rare, rather unworldly-looking and utterly fascinating.
Photo credit to Jonathan Nimerfroh
New York Times photo
Looking at the pictures, and thinking of a recent tragedy in the life of a friend, sparked this poem.
Grief
The very ocean
has transformed—
free flowing-waves
congealed to slushy surf.
My pulse rolls slowly
with this strange tide.
How do such things
come to pass?
I would have said
it was impossible.
Yet, here I stand
at the shore.
Without you.
Molly Hogan ©2020
This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Cheriee at her blog Library Matters. She’s sharing a fascinating interview with Canadian poet, Avis Harley. Be sure to stop by and check it out. You’ll absolutely come away richer for the experience.
Nix the comfort zone 
This poem expresses so beautifully that feeling of loss and the impossibility of it. How can we go on? Yet there’s the ocean that continues to wave.
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Thanks, Margaret. I’ve always thought of grief as seismic, shifting our landscape in permanent ways. It was new for me to think of it in terms of the ocean.
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I’m blown away with your artistry. Does this friend follow your blog? Will you frame this for her? Love and light from California.
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Thanks, Dan. I wish the pictures were mine, but sadly I’ve never witnessed this phenomenon. I suppose, like sea fog, it’s the upside to freezing weather. Our friend doesn’t follow my blog, and I’ve been debating about whether to share the poem or not. Perhaps I will.
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I would, Molly. You have such an exquisite way with words. Even if it causes an ocean of tears, it will also be helpful/healing – to know you care so much, and your friend is not alone. Grief comes in waves – and this poem will mean different things at different times. Love to you.
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So beautiful, and you’re right – that’s exactly how it feels. Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
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Ruth, I so wanted to comment on your post today but wasn’t able to. I kept getting a sad face when I tried–I think it mirrored my own! At any rate, your post was fabulous from start to finish. I loved the names of your birds, your brother’s message and the creative energy involved in you transforming his words into your fabulous poem. And warblers! Got to love those warblers! (It made me happy to know that we see some of the same birds 🙂
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The cold aloneness of grief…right there. Well said.
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Even when shared, grief is ultimately so solitary, isn’t it?
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It is a beautiful expression of loss. Something about “Yet here I stand” touches me profoundly.
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Although it seems impossible, we do go on, don’t we?
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Oh Molly, your poem transported me back to those times when grief for people I loved was this raw.
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I read your poem, Molly, and it gave me chills. I read it a second time and chills again. I guess you chose the right metaphor, since that slushy ice keeps traveling up and down my spine each time I read your words.
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Your poem expresses so well what grief feels like–life goes on but it is so hard to get through those days–just like those waves are sluggish and cold and otherworldly.
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Gorgeous poem, very evocative of our feelings of grief. Thank you…
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Molly, that semi-solid ice — the impossibly transformed waves — the slushy movement, together they make a perfect metaphor for how grief feels in our bodies.
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Moving poem Molly – an unreal helplessness–you captured it well.
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