Selected Poems



     

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."