Eel grass rolled by the waves at play In fresh cut swaths like the new mown hay; Lettuce that glints with a fragile sheen: And Irish moss with its mottled green And cream and purple and pink and brown From the matted gulfs where sailors drown! Algae dyed like a fresh blown rose Red is their telltale hue that glows On the white sands edging the brooding sea. A network of delicate imagery Like the thin fine lines of an etching traced That the blundering surges have not erased. Harvest from tide tilled fields that bloom Deep down where the sunlight fades in gloom. Gardens of sinister mystery Under the waves of the heaving sea. Gardens the living may never know Where dead men drift in the ebb and flow! Jungles where fishes and creatures strange Through the lush profusion may freely range. Not for the living but for the dead Are those fields submerged that we may not tread, But their harvest is scattered within our reach By the wild waves mourning along the beach. BEACH GRASS Tremulous as elfin lances Are the thin shafts of the beach grass, Blades and tufted points that quiver Eerily to winds of midnight; Magic strings on lyres enchanted, Strings that strum a lilting cadence Played upon by fairy fingers. Beach grass blades that whirl and struggle In the clutch of boisterous breezes. Needle tips that mark strange circles In the cowering sands beneath them, Tracings of a fairy stylus, Runic etchings vague and ghostlike. Tenuous roots, like bamboo jointed Delving, burrowing neath the surface Of the rough hewn sand dunes moulded By great Nature’s groping fingers; (Waves and tempests are her fingers) With their living network binding Crumbling sands that melt and vanish - In a woven web of fibre. Threading with tenacious purpose Mantles lovely and protective, Till the battered landscape brightens Smiles through scars and cruel gashes Smiles in glossy, rippling beach grass Undulating in the breezes Like a field of ripened barley. Beach grass, desperate, clinging, gripping Braving wrath of winter tempests, Scourged by sands that sting like nettles, Blinding clouds that lash and smother, Wet with driven spume and frosted, With the salt and oft half buried, As the tortured dunes roll landward, Uncouth monsters, struggling, straining By the rage of Neptune driven Stumbling, sprawling, lurching onward.