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.
Along the silvered edge of tide,
Where restless waters meet the shore,
A sanderling on stilted stride
Attends the sea’s unhurried lore.
His feathered mantle, ash and snow,
A cloak of cloud upon the swell;
He bends where shallow ripples flow
And gleans what humble tides foretell.
No hurried thought disturbs the air,
He keeps a slower, older creed:
To walk the margin, stoop, and share
The morning’s small, sufficient need.
And I, who watch him from the sand,
Would learn the wisdom of his art,
To take what’s given, hand to hand,
Between the waves that cross the heart.
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.
Wild Cape Photography is back! Well, truthfully, it never really left. The Instagram page has been happily rolling along this whole time. But this blog, which launched way back in 2017 as the anchor, the cornerstone, the beating heart of all things Wild Cape, took what we shall call a temporary sabbatical thanks to the dueling ailments of technical issues and that eternal thief one might refer to as time.
Sadly, those same tech problems made off with all of the archives from 2020 onward, so what you’ll find here now are the survivors, the plucky little posts from 2017 to 2020 that lived to tell the tale. Consider them the vintage collection.
But let us shed no tears. My camera is still fully operational, my pen is still far mightier than any sword, and my muse, Nature, is still filled with endless wonder. So shake loose from the fetters of nihilistic materialism, joyless brutalism, and whatever passes as mindless entertainment online these days. We are heading back to the Wild Cape and we are going to Live Wild!
Along the reed-lined water’s quiet crease,
He stands in olive stillness, robed in peace.
A statue cast in bronze and dappled slate,
He tends the silver current like a gate.
No restless wing disturbs the morning air;
He holds the hush of reverence and prayer.
The minnows script their sermons in the stream;
He reads each line as though it were a dream.
Then sudden as a psalm, he strikes for death,
And lifts a wriggling silver on his breath.
He shakes the river from his crested crown,
And folds again where willow boughs bend down.
The marshy world grows still, the reeds convene
To honor him, the priest of pond and green.
The ocean is a mighty harmonist. -William Wordsworth
