Your Ocean Poems

May is here and that means National Poetry Month is officially over. As promised, we're going to highlight a few of the submissions we've received from our call for your ocean poems.

Sailors, divers, and sunbathers all penned poems. Some praised the big blue's beauty. Others bemoaned its mistreatment. Coral reefs inspired some, aircraft carriers moved others (literally and figuratively).

Full disclosure: the Ocean Portal staff does not profess to have advanced degrees in poetry, rhyming, meter, or the like.

Thanks to all who submitted their work! Your poems are truly inspiring and moving. You can still add poems here and also let us know your faves, too! National Poetry Month may have ended, but our love for the ocean endures...

 Without further ado, here are four of our -- completely subjective -- favorites, in no particular order:

....Blending

One ocean
oscillates
with a billion shores
splashed
in zillions of ways...

I walk firmly on one
wet beach
following tide lines
salt air in my curling hair
evaporating

- Anne Selden Annab

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Scale-less majesty
Hydrogen and oxygen
Two thirds of the Earth

-B. Platt, Lawrence, KS

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Numinous

Where land and ocean greet
a living Mandala
a magic carpet
a sacred mosaic

Sands sprout small legs and sideways dance
shells intricately-wrought delicately glide by
fallen stars festoon water’s windswept gown
pebbles glisten, or glitter as precious stones
on a sublime neckline

Ocean surface a liquid sky
a great glass ceiling
to a fluid wonder world
world-within-world

Now, through a looking glass, gaze deeply
onto a strangely illumined, meditative existence
(where sound is swallowed whole)
a silent motion picture featuring
otherworldly cast of characters
of Infinite variety and beauty

Dramatic dreamscapes and fantastic gardens
living coral atop skeletons of past generations
palimpsest upon which ocean story is inscribed
coral bones to body of water

Communal castles of Life and Death
these reefs turn none away
home to a profusion of color-forms
exercises in poetic precision
or deliberate imagination.

- Yahia Lababidi, Washington, DC

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I love the ocean, but it doesn't love me.
I've a terrible salt water allergy
That me makes me itch and say "Oww-eee"!!!

-- Anonymous