Driftwood Poems

driftwood

driftwood
caressed by the waves of time
~ lost and found



AP: 1st placce 2025

The Driftwood Hut

There between the sandy dunes
And the ageless azure shore
Stood a little driftwood hut
That I’d never seen before

The beach grass waved and whispered
And the ocean waved and roared
As I found myself enticed
To step inside the door

Who had built this humble house
This sturdy little shell
To listen to the sea’s song in
Or let some hermit dwell?

Or maybe it was meant to be
A place to meditate
To find myself inside myself
While I sit and wait.

Mirrored Driftwood

A lone prisoner of my own making,
a cocoon confined within introvert isolation,
I see all the familiar faces recede nowhere,
leaving me stuck in the maze of acuity.
In the weed-webbed wasteland within
piles up the wreckage of life unlived.
My mystique mind turns into Nemesis,
makes a wilderness of mirrors for me,
reflecting the pernicious perception of anguish, 
an emotion engulfed by intuitive foreboding.

The sane sense losing the route to perpetuity,
disappears in the miasma of lonesome reflections. 
The marooned psyche meanders in desolate darkness,
trying to find the deluded traveler, instinctive me.
Enshrouded by despair I turn into a dead wood, 
afloat on the turbulent flow of the ordained strife.   
With secluded mind I drift in the time's eternal flow,
and on the move, I don’t remember where I started from,
for like mirrored driftwood my memory has no memory.

Driftwood

the tide pulls, the wind howls
but i do not cling to the storm
i am driftwood, floating free
unburdened by the weight of the waves

hands reach, voices call
urging me to sink, to fight
but i let the current carry me
where it wills, where i must go

the sky shifts, the water calms
storms rage but do not touch my soul
for i am not the wind, nor the tide
i am only me--floating free

Symphony of Driftwood Whispers

Written: September 1st, 2024 For Constance la France Contest

Quote (The ocean's voice is seductive, whispering, clamoring, and grumbling, enticing the soul to wander in solitude and lose itself in introspection.) By Poet


                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Allow the oceans to dance with sweet waves,
Flutter your flowing songs, as you swirl bright.
You, copious wrinkles, all day and night,
Talk cheerfully with breezes and graves!

Streams flow sportily across the wide slash,
Until you are white and covered in foam.
And patter past steep stones and curvy roams,
Pearls and diamonds are lush in the trash!

You may call me obvious, stream, or mane,
Is moonlight pale in the cerulean sky?
My gaze is mirrored as I sweep awry,
My face's tan is spurred by molten rain.

My full beard is adorned with crystal moss.
In music, mermaid laughter is like dross.

10 Syllables by line Checked by HMS.COM

Driftwood - A Brief Fantasy Adventure

sculptured hobo of the sea
a pirate’s swashbuckling adventure
siren, kraken, leviathan
or some other ocean creature
but now enjoying retirement
as peaceful a garden feature

Driftwood

fewer …

stars there are
in the heart of heaven
than the myriad ripples of brine that
gently placed me here -
tender tongues of tide that tossed me
and polished my bark away
shaped me smooth from jagged -
turned from beast, to beauty …
courses ago -
I was loosed from a tree
and lost to the sevens in a gale -
sundered from all I’d known
yet …
my journey was ordered
as all things are
made divine not by substance
but by ministration
and singularity …
for the universe, entire,
holds no other creation like me
the countless moments
and patient, boundless energy
that my trek required
would never have been wasted
on the unremarkable …
and though one sojourn has ended
something awaits
that is more infinite, even
than waves …
OR suns …

possibility.







Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, August 12, 2023

( photo taken 8/1/23 by Gregory R Barden, Ferry Beach, Scarborough, ME )

Driftwood

The great artist
Picked up piece
And began to show
Explaining to the crowd
About
...driftwood

This is where
She saw TRUTH
...clearly
Look at the frayed end
Happened during
...revolt

See this
It's where TRUTH
Connected
She aligned
Then rejected
...responsibility

Drained of all life
Nowhere left
For LOVE to inject
THE WAY
...so she drifts

Tossed by every wind of doctrine
She is without hope
And her name is
DESPAIR

Written by Trudy Schrader on 08-09-2023

Driftwood

The stream surges in turbulent torrent
the dry tree felled by the summer storm,
the truncated trunk anchors at the tilted levee, 
in the web of boulders it sticks, stranded. 

The flood slackens the grip of the slope, 
the log begins a new journey
to the remote end the stream ordains, 
the abandoned attachment it forgets, dislocated.

My life uprooted by the squall of strife,
drifts like the log, finds no holding ledge,
seeks to find the free course to the ultimate, 
the notion of bonding I don’t sense, unpossessed.

The tide of time takes me to the strange shore, 
in the alien mooring I linger awhile,
where people see me as a vagrant driftwood,
an artifact of frozen mind, fossilized. 
 
______________

March 10, 2023
For Brian Strand Premier No 1196 Contest

Unquiet Tides

Barefoot I could walk this beach
Forever and yet never reach
That fabled land where sand meets sky
I never will, though I might try

Barefoot among empty shells
With hermit crabs’ permit to dwell
And none or all to call my home
I take comfort in the ephemeral foam

Barefoot by this misty bay
Where spindrifts spill their silver spray
And strands of kelp can’t help but scroll
Love letters in the sand and soul

Barefoot I will stroll this shore
Forever and for evermore
In driftwood dreams, I seem to fly
I never will, though I might try.

Driftwood

The shores 
in my world 
are cluttered
with driftwood
scattered in piles
along the dunes
and their twisted
sea-shaped and
sand-worn elegance
always calls to me
in their stranded
moments of grace.

A Young Man

There was once a young man who stood.
He said, "See the great parenthood!"
It was quite great,
But not coordinate,
He couldn't say no to the driftwood.

Driftwood

The blue hills rolled down embracing 
the verdant slopes in rhythmic dance, 
to the cradle of the humming hamlet 
where my childhood home was once. 

With formless flotilla of cloud clumps, 
floating free in seamless cerulean sky, 
my teenage exuberance soared high 
with the colorful kites I loved to fly. 

The cascading brook of aqua pearls, 
flowed down in flamboyant grandeur, 
girdling our house in a latticed loop 
of horse-shoe contoured meander. 

My rainbow tinged paper boats glided
on the curling current’s rippling trail, 
on these to distant shore of dreamland 
I felt entranced my fervent fantasy sail. 

When the storm surged from nowhere,
the kites flew away, and the boats sank,
an uprooted tree, I turned to driftwood,
the boats I search for, stuck at river bank.

Written : August 7, 2020
June 21, 2022
Contest : 2022 Poetry Marathon Mile 4
Sponsored by : Mark Toney

Driftwood

Washed on riverbank,

pallid wrinkled waterlogged.

Mud cloaks where you sank.

Anchored Driftwood

Anchored,
uprooted wonderer desolate dreamer,
love the serene canopy of empathy, soft touch of heart,
and tender care,
so I can grow roots, flourish new foliage, adorn tree of life,
create cool shade of compassion, spread benign
boughs for nests, find love in rippling breeze.
I fear the storm of strife, wrecking nests of longing, and the birds
flying away.
I’d harbor my sinking soul, unfurl the buds of memory and bloom
flowers of bliss.
Resident of sunset niche called wasteland,
Driftwood.

Posted : April 16, 2020
June 11, 2020
Contest : Brian's Select B
Sponsor : Brian Strand

• Short Driftwood Poems
• Famous Driftwood Poems
• Best Driftwood Poems
• Read Driftwood Poems
• Long Driftwood Poems
• Driftwood Quotes