Ed Coletti
COMOX (BRITISH COLUMBIA)
TIDAL FRAGMENTS
Canowauga Beach
June
Huge clumsy-stepping giant upsetting tidal pool new homes- what price to crush even one hermit crab. Gulls clenching dark purple star fish cannot grasp how to deal with them- no shell, but it certainly is chewy! fly up, drop it a few more times, land, shuffle about vacantly staring, with gummy starflesh dangling.
Observed:
gulls, sculpin, blue herons, purple starfish, seals, raccoon, otters playing
and fishing, loon, bald eagles, ducks, deer, geese, grouse, moon snail,
ravens, horse clams, hummingbirds, robins, sand dollars, garter snake,
crabs, striated fat black slugs, kingfisher, violet-green swallows, sand dabs
Rock undersides crackling with movings at low tide noisy with clams clearing their siphons Ah to paint all the quiet colors of tidal pool at lowering tide!
Lowtide:
rocks crackle with crabs; Bald Eagle surveying curve of coast checks me out with quick turn of head. I'm flattered. Kelp matted rock Slippery footing over silent purple starfish speckled white and shining cling to the underside of boulders add to the ever-mounting camouflage for crabs.
Spitters
Beneath green low tide sea bog like tiniest whales subterranean fireboats spewing- a contest for distance. Kelp-covered shiny dark translucent shrink wrap clinging to the cobbles- precarious platforms
Rising tide:
Seated on a large rock: why walk? All things eventually come to me. Like this tennis ball washed ashore from a cruise ship. Some things live and some things don't. I look at the sea- "Some day, just that."