Beached! a poem

I am excited!

About a month ago I entered 3 poems in a contest sponsored by Lansing City Pulse newspaper and Scene Metrospace Gallery in East Lansing, MI.  One of my poems was selected for an honorable mention!  So excited!  I've never sent a poem out anywhere before! While I cannot be there for the reading, the juror,Stephanie Glazier will read it at (SCENE) Metrospace, 110 Charles St.,E. Lansing, MI  on Wednesday, Nov. 28 at 7 p.m.The event is free and open to the public. The poem Beached was written a few years ago when I spent a week investigating different forms of writing at the Loft Literary Center, here in Minneapolis. Like most of my writing, it is developed from visual and sensual images.  Like most of my work as a visual artist, my writing is very process oriented.  I rarely enter the creative arena knowing exactly what I will produce.  I might have some vague ideas, some faint recurring themes...but until the words (or the charcoal) begin to flow onto the paper, I cannot glimpse my destination. This poem began as a memory of the wind in the wheat on Prince Edward Island. Beached Sea/sky seam, a single sunstruck blue, infinite unending distance. Wind ripples through unexpected wheat, collecting shoots in green waves rolling to the edge of the cliff, Colliding with the upward flight of gulls, noisy and muscular, diving back to the beach. The crashing breakers dig tiny crabs from safety, dashing them against the rocks. I do not understand the tides, sweeping sand out to sea, leaving kelp, discarded among the bones. I only know I lie salty, sweaty drenched with the ocean. And you, my little crab, lie stunned, beached on my belly.