Gulls cry above combers,
plovers ebb with the tide.
It’s time to lift the pail
painted with red starfish
and blue leaping dolphins
with the yellow tin shovel
to try the wet sand. You’ll
find an indigo mussel shell
and pink carapace of crab,
shiver as ocean rages over
lost sailors’ cries in Davy
Jones’ dark locker though
streaked with green veins
water isn’t all deeper blue.
At the top the wave breaks,
curves and thins to faintest
jade, sea blanched by sky
a pale door you can enter.
Author Bio:
Nels Hanson grew up on a small raisin and tree fruit farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California, earned degrees from U.C. Santa Cruz and the University of Montana, and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.
plovers ebb with the tide.
It’s time to lift the pail
painted with red starfish
and blue leaping dolphins
with the yellow tin shovel
to try the wet sand. You’ll
find an indigo mussel shell
and pink carapace of crab,
shiver as ocean rages over
lost sailors’ cries in Davy
Jones’ dark locker though
streaked with green veins
water isn’t all deeper blue.
At the top the wave breaks,
curves and thins to faintest
jade, sea blanched by sky
a pale door you can enter.
Author Bio:
Nels Hanson grew up on a small raisin and tree fruit farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California, earned degrees from U.C. Santa Cruz and the University of Montana, and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.
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