Day 48 - times passes

foraging and gratitude

This is about mussel hunting at spring-tide, but it’s also about life. Aren’t all poems about life, though, one way or another?

Foraging is an activity that produces serotonin (yup, they researched and measured it), but these days I quite often wish that there weren’t quite so many foragers, ubiquitously ravishing the landscape without any thought of balance or reciprocity. It seems to be more about a competition than about the joy of finding and harvesting food that will sustain you, and feeling deep gratitude to our mother, the earth.

One to one hundred and one

one
the world is a mussel, a secret, shut tight
eleven
so many creatures to discover, out here on the rocks
twenty-one
rise at sunrise, on the day of the new moon
thirty-one
wear shoes, you might slip and fall
forty-one
the rocks are bare, exposed
fifty-one
watch for the turning tide
sixty-one
sometimes the waves engulf you
seventy-one
sit on the beach, it’s beautiful here
eighty-one
send out the young ones with buckets and knives
ninety-one
cling to the rocks when the storm comes
one hundred and one
breathe air, breathe water, grow barnacles,
return to the deep