Ocean Grove beach. Winter. Paul Goldfinger photo © Blogfinger.net.  click to enlarge the” ocean’s moods.”

Hi Paul:

Greetings from Manhattan. In winter, one can walk the empty beach at Ocean Grove and, at any time of day or night, listen to the various natural sounds of sea and shore. Here is the poem, “Listener,” from my book-in-progress, Circle of Time.

Happy New Year,
Charles Pierre

Listener

By Charles  Pierre

At the easternmost end of town, where nothing
but empty coastline greets the incoming waves,

I follow a path through the dunes to this beach
and listen long as the ocean discloses its moods:

just past sunrise, when whispers of Atlantic wind
crease my hair and lift sea straw against my legs;

at sun-sharp noon, when rushing tides roll and build
to high-arcing breakers that pound the rough sand;

late in the day, when slant light and muffled breezes
cover the surface of water with glittering shingles;

through the evening, when currents run black
on whistling gusts, and a violet haze mutes the sky;

at midnight, when the air is still and low surf
rustles onshore; and afterward, in the hour

before dawn, when the ocean shares a deep silence
with the land that slopes down to its rippling edge,

as the waning moon leads me back from the beach
to the shadowed dunes and narrow path inland.

SLOVENIA SYMPHONIC ORCHESTRA.  Xerxes Act 1, George Frederic Handel