It is very high here where the Pacific limbs blue between the islands among rocks scabbed with gray lichens. A gray crochet of lichens, the humble one-celled union of land and sea - alga and fungus - works stone. There is a photograph of the world, taken from outer space, that resembles this rock, a thing tender in its clasp of cloud and continent. Their gentle chisel of growth casts the rock to earth circle by circle, an expanding scab of life, and all their progeny are sand, as if the earth were an ever-after hourglass with this frail lace the only supplier of time. This pale marriage clasps the eternal and makes it tick, makes forever green hours of trees forever half-grown in the Pacific wind where the serene shadow of a gull lingers upon this thigh of tide. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A MUSICAL by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR CURIOSITY by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR HERO AND LEANDER by CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE STILL, STILL WITH THEE by HARRIET BEECHER STOWE EPIGRAM by DECIMUS MAGNUS AUSONIUS COME UP HIGHER by MINNIE KEITH BAILEY |