I came down early where the tide had been
And found the stones set shining in a row,
As if the sea, in drawing out again,
Had washed them for a reason I should know.
The pines stood back the way that pines will stand
When evening puts a question to the shore,
And what the water gave the waiting land
Was less a flame than something known before.
Where sunlit waters silver-spill,
The pines stand watch upon the hill;
The tumbled stones in quiet lay,
And greet the hush of breaking day.
The tide draws in with gentle hand,
To smooth the edges of the land;
While spruce and fern, in seaward air,
Breathe out a psalm as soft as prayer.
O sea, O stone, O steadfast tree,
You keep the Maker’s poetry;
And I, who pause upon this stair,
Am blessed to find His glory there.
Two green shoulders stoop to drink the lake,
And in that stillness, heaven stirs awake,
Clouds unhurried, psalm-like, drift and pass
Above the water’s slow, unshattered glass.
Silence here has learned the tongue of light,
The far shore dissolving, tender, into white;
And something more than summer lingers near,
A door left open in the quiet air.
The sun descends and sets the tide aflame,
As if the deep remembered God by name.
Each wave that breaks rehearses our own breath,
A brief ascent, a bowing down to death.
The gold dissolves; the horizon drinks the light;
Creation sighs, and hands the day to night.
Yet still the sea, unmastered and unmade,
Keeps time with One whose glory does not fade.
And I, small witness on this trembling shore,
Am taught by waves what words cannot restore:
That all which rises must in mercy fall,
And falling, find the Love that holds it all.
Down mossy ledge and stone the waters fall,
A hidden calm the pines and hollows call.
Through cleft of rock the silver ribbons run,
And braid their prayer beneath the veiled sun.
Here silence learns the tongue the wild has known,
God’s whisper cut in water, moss, and stone.
