‘My dear,’ she wrote, ‘You wouldn’t believe
how the light comes in across the ocean.’
‘Oh yes,’ I replied, ‘I live beside an ocean –
the distant shore, indeed, of the same ocean.’
‘I have kinship with this piece of land,’ she explained,
‘forged in childhood – therefore, too, with the ocean.’
‘Ah yes,’ I said, ‘I grew up on a small island
edged in all directions by one or another ocean.’
‘You could never understand,’ she went on,
‘what it is to be beloved of the ocean.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I expect not. I am merely a supplicant,
offering my respects to this vast, changing ocean.
‘I love to watch its jewel colours shift and interplay,
and the whales further out, travelling their own ocean.
‘I like to walk the winter sand, the tide teasing my feet
with frothy kisses: an enticing, dangerous ocean.
‘Or else to sit high on the cliff while storm clouds
gather and swell and lower, merging with the ocean.
‘I can’t live far inland, on the flat. I need mountains,
a quick river, and a breeze redolent of ocean.’
She said, ‘I understand that yours
is a flat, scrubby country far from the ocean.
‘I have read about your country. It sounds
interesting, different. One day I’ll cross the ocean.
‘Then you can show me your desert. It will be
fascinating for me, whose home is girt by ocean.’
This is fiction, which grew out of a completely different instance of speaking and not being heard. However, when I visited America in 2006, I was astonished by how many people informed me that I live in a flat, treeless country. Since the recent bushfires, I think people do now know that we have trees – if only because so many of them got burned. And of course it is true that we have a large interior desert (known as the Outback); but it's also true that the vast majority of us live around the coastal fringe. (For those who wouldn't pick up the reference, the last line has a small irony in that the Australian national anthem, 'Advance Australia Fair' says that OUR home is 'girt by sea.')
I grew up on the island of Tasmania, and now live on the east coast of mainland Australia, where this photo was taken. It's by delightful coincidence that it echoes the photo Magaly uses in her Writers' Pantry #8 at Poets and Storytellers United, where I'm sharing this poem. (Also linking to earthweal's Open Link Weekend #8.)
I understand this poem so well, coming from an island race, albeit, as Bill Bryson called it, a small island. I’ve fallen in love with the lines:
ReplyDelete‘I love to watch its jewel colours shift and interplay,
and the whales further out, travelling their own ocean.
I like to walk the winter sand, the tide teasing my feet
with frothy kisses: an enticing, dangerous ocean.
Or else to sit high on the cliff while storm clouds
gather and swell and lower, merging with the ocean.’
The repetition of ‘ocean’ is so effective in evoking waves.
Ah yes, you would of course understand.
DeleteAustralia is a pretty big island, but Tasmania a very small one. (Smile.)
Yes, we are so lucky in Australia to have our own independent continent of our own. Just wish we wouldn't keep letting other countries get the better of us in mining, fishing and trading.
ReplyDeleteAh, the stereotypes people believe. Well I'm a Brit so am never more than 70 miles from the sea, and seeing we have I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, we all know you have trees :)
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed your words. great write.
Ha, 'I'm a Celebrity' is shot quite close to where I live. (Not as far from civilisation as they make it appear.)
DeleteI live in a coastal town, but my home is more inland than by the sea. I don’t drive and the coast is two bus rides away and there is a lack of those “conveniences” (there) that some old girls need – me – so I visit the shores of my town seldom.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, I can often smell the sea in the air and sometimes feel that wonderful ?chill that you only experience if living by that wonderful wet stuff that ebbs and flows.
Your words express our sad ignorance of the world outside our own little bubbles.
Anna :o]
Without a car I wouldn't get very close either. Our ocean is one (long, rambling) bus ride away. I love the smell of the sea air!
DeleteWonderful ghazal, this. Salute!
ReplyDeleteI don't think of Australia as an island, that's for sure. I like the idea of speaking without being heard and of course, everything about the ocean, walking the shore and your whales and how it can touch two completely different land masses without changing what it touches. We have our inland seas (what we call the Great Lakes) though the power isn't quite the same.
ReplyDeleteA most gorgeous contemporary ghazal, Rosemary!💝 I resonate with "the tide teasing my feet with frothy kisses: an enticing, dangerous ocean."😍😍
ReplyDeleteLuv your communication with the ocean one more than one level
ReplyDeleteHappy Sunday
Thanks for dropping by my sumie Sunday today
Much❤love
Lovely images and talking past one another. The inability to see the beauty or hear the words resonates.
ReplyDeleteI can so relate to it. Loved it.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the play of the two conversations happening here, supposedly in call and response, but actually independent of each other, as conversation implies listening, and one side is not enough. I thought this was a telling line "...the whales further out, travelling their own ocean.." in further pointing out the way each individual sees their own world, and that world may see itself, differently. The images of land and sea are also very effective and lovely. I envy you your beautiful country which I will never see except in poems like this.
ReplyDeleteMy "sea" is grassland that is of Iowa, USA and the typical stereotype is that our state is flat. Well, maybe a third flat from the last glacier ages, the rest carved by those melting glaciers. Oh, and we wear overalls and stick a grass stem in our mouths....
ReplyDeleteIf we could just get past our preconceptions and listen to each other, maybe we could see the beauty that is in the land and in each other.
I enjoy the pictures of your ocean.
I know lovely parts of your country, breathtaking parts and would love to know more of the pieces you write of.
ReplyDeleteA wonderful story.
ReplyDeleteWith most of the Earth's surface taken up by water, any land is an island in one sense -- I live on a peninsula with water running around most of it -- and most Americans live close to a coast, much like Australia. I read the dialogue here as about what bonds (we're all children of water) and separates. The differences, it seems, are token. Thanks for bringing it to earthweal -- Brendan
ReplyDeleteLove it! This is awesome for so many reasons. Great job with the conversation - it reads with a wonderful authenticity - which can be tricky to put to paper. You strike some beautiful notes with your word weaving … the ocean descriptions are sublime. The narrative - speaking and not being heard - is articulated so well, in this, and thus: very relatable. And the backstory was interesting … and also very relatable. A super post … a pleasure to read.
ReplyDeleteYou made me homesick for my own peninsula and ocean. Where have I gone?
ReplyDeleteTime for a visit?
DeleteUuuuuggghh...some of my fellow Americans can be so self centered in their world view. It makes me cringe every time I hear it. LOL, I so appreciated the patient voice in this piece, who knew they had nothing to prove so they could quietly chuckle at the ridiculousness.
ReplyDeleteRosemary, I loved the dialogue here, it sounds like to me to be a bragging rights and put-you-down rivalry. The parts of Tasmania that we visited were lovely. The only island, even considering our State, Hawaii, the can beat it is Isle of Man. Three-eights of my blood (German 1/4, 3/8 British the rest), comes from there. It has old country "charm* that Tasmania lacks.
ReplyDeleteMy observations and feelings.
Oh yes, thank you for your writing of the Friday soliloquies, I feel enlightened after reading them.
..
And yet they tell me Hawaii is very, very beautiful. (Alas, I am unlikely to get there, nor to the Isle of Man.)
DeleteThanks for remarking on my Friday posts for Poets and Storytellers United; so glad you enjoy them.
This held me all the way--the back and forth, and the not being understood. Masterfully done. I love the ocean, but I need the mountains, so that's why I dwell among them. 65 miles from Mexico, where the ocean is available for those who need their fix.
ReplyDeleteI also need mountains, and grew up among them too (Tasmania is a very mountainous little island) so I am not right on the shore, I am surrounded by mountains with the ocean very quickly and easily accessible by car (about 26k or 17 miles away).
DeleteSome people are just too good at using their mouths and not their ears. I wonder how much of the world and of living they miss because of this unfortunate trait.
ReplyDeletethe oceans have no walls or doors, nor the skies any boundaries
ReplyDeleteanjum wasim dar
Wisely said!
DeleteDon't we all get those stunningly oblique attempts-at-conversation online!
ReplyDeleteLots of people in the US think they know something about my town. What they are remembering almost always turns out to be something reported 50-100 years ago about a completely different town.
*Grin.*
DeleteThanks for finding this, and commenting.