Sculpting the Coastline Together Again

My fingers itch as I
watch clouds racing
across a bracing sky.

Wind wrestles everything into flux,
bowls waves against an unforgiving
fractured coast.

Sea booms and boasts,
spits salty spray,
whips hair, seaweed and marram into a melee.

My hands tingle with a defiant energy,
gather crumbs of cliff and tumbled
rocks, melt them into putty,

fill the cracks nature has rent,
a super Michelangelo matching powers with the elements.

Kim M. Russell, 2018

Image result for artwork of a storm crashing waves against the Norfolk coast
Crest Of A Wave (detail) by Maggi Hambling – image found on bbc.co.uk

My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: Super me! also linked to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Tuesday Platform and earthweal open link weekend #59

Lill, our host for this Tuesday’s Poetics, says that the superhero, Black Panther, is getting rave movie reviews and that, when she was young, she idolized the Lone Ranger. Marvel characters such as The Hulk, Spider Man, and Thor have great mass appeal, as does Wonder Woman. Mythology’s Hercules, canonized saints like Joan of Arc and Mother Teresa, and people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr and Malia may also be considered superheroes. The term is also applied generically to people within groups such as first responders, fire fighters, and those who put others in front of themselves in emergency situations. She also says that if we change the words a bit, we can talk about having a super power: an extraordinary ability, capacity, or strength ~ or about being a super power.

She challenges us to think about the words superhero and super power(s), and then write a poem, any form and any length, about something or someone or some characteristic related to these words ~ perhaps imaginative, perhaps real.

42 thoughts on “Sculpting the Coastline Together Again”

    1. Once Great Britain was attached to mainland Europe and they have been finding evidence of this (a forest below the North Sea, mammoth skeletons and arrow heads) for many years. I wrote a poem about the land that once lay between, it’s called Doggerland. Sadly our coastline is crumbling away. Although we don’t have many high cliffs along the North Norfolk coast, another one collapsed recently. Not far from where I live, houses are being abandoned because there is no way of shoring up the cliffs. Someone has predicted that much of Norfolk will eventually be claimed by the sea. I wish I could push it all back into place, it’s so lovely here.

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    1. Thanks Sanaa! This is something I truly wish I could do. The coast near to where I live is eroding and it seems it can’t be stopped, despite man-made reefs.

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  19. You have certainly created an artistic superhero here Kim. I especially love your third stanza:

    ‘Sea booms and boasts,
    spits salty spray,
    whips hair, seaweed and marram into a melee.’

    I get a melee of sounds, tastes and visions from these three lines!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

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