Sea Calm

Solitude

Photo: Ben Locke

How still,
How strangely still
The water is today,
It is not good
For water
To be so still that way. 

Langston Hughes

Solitude

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude, 'tis but to hold
Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.

But midst the crowd, the hurry, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,
And roam alone, the world's tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all the flattered, followed, sought and sued;
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

Lord Byron

(Picture by Peter Hollard)

Lone Figure

Lone Figure

Where a lone figure strides
along the wide empty
rim of the sea a gull
holds the sun
like a shell
in its beak
from the sea’s womb
from the tide’s
broken tomb
a hermit crab crawls
into the dropped empty
shell of the sun
and with its huge claw
closes the door.

Written by Charl Cilliers

(Picture by Peter Hollard)

Boer