Guest poet: Isabel Chenot

"Limekiln Beach"

photo by the author

Limekiln beach


As though old behemoths
had wandered out, been stranded in the tide
and petrified,
the hummocks of huge rocks slue toward
an unseen shore.

Around their knees the waves' insistent prose
diminishes and grows
to sound's repletion;
and a white seabird
floats above the sea-froth's

whiteness – over the lull and shatter
of its pulse
the seagull makes a cross.
A slant sun keeps precarious
balance on the slipping margins of each wave's cohesion.

They are all so much older than I am.

I have been led like Abraham
out of my little kinships, to the endless
recesses of water –
counting light's shifting, geometric bones,
collecting thoughts

from shells and graven stones.

Isabel Chenot has loved poetry all her remembered life. Some of her poems are collected in The Joseph Tree, available from Wiseblood books.