Shingle Poems | Examples

Ground Clouds and Fish Smaze

A mackerel sky fillets a fish scaled village,
an ear clapping, full sailed, fog
moors itself to the rooftops,
then hides all in a breezeless blear.

Rheumy eyes peep out from nets,
damp noses sniff abaft trawling drapes.
Cloth in hand, potbellied proprietors
battle the splatter and spray,
dabbing at mildewed shelves,
warding away slopping waders
and salty puddles.

On the sightless sea
far beyond the shore and shingle,
fog horns are lowing like lost cattle.

Later, misty reeks will be scoured
from groggy docks,
hauling hands will rope together
the tide-tossed salvage

by and by, squeaky boots
may trudge to taprooms
where codgers and callow alike
can be well oiled
and duly quenched.

LANTERNE the half AMERICAN CINQUAIN HIKU

COLLECTION

VIDUAGE

Tall
nettles-
the dutch hoe
rusting in the
shed.

Lanterne #5

a
sea mist
rolls inshore-
daydreams deluge
me

Lanterne#18

Blind
alleys 
so often
have the deepest
ruts.

Lanterne 3

By
a stream
so shallow-
stoops a willow
tree.

Lanterne 177

May
blossom-
confetti
dancing on the
breeze

ART SCHOOL

The 
secret
of seeing-
knowing how to
see


RISING STAR

A
life in
the fast lane-
five minutes of
fame.

as a LANTERNE ALMANAC

WINTER
in
anger-
whips up the waves,
pounds the shingle
shore
SPRING
in
action-
brings to life
and feathers its
nest
SUMMER
so 
lazy-
rests the soul
and flowers the
land
AUTUMN
so
mellow-
scents and sounds
in the harvest
home.


DRIFTING
our
feelings
subside as
we go with the
flow

Maybe a Drean Therapist Could Help Me

the dream therapist put out his shingle
for a mere sixty dollars he will interpret your dream
If you dream of a turtle, it means life is slowing down

If you dream of a fish, you are trying to be free and encumbered
an oak tree in your dream can mean a variety of things
It might mean you are the oak in your family
or it could mean you admire the oak in your family

I read the brochure and thought I would have a go.
He looked like a normal man.
I offered him the sixty dollars up front.

We can take care of that later, he told me.
It is actually $67.98 with tax.
I would have to use a credit card.

Tell me about your dream, the therapist said.
I was cozy in an orange chair.
I told him that I never dream.

He argued this with me.
I left without paying him sixty dollars
or sixty seven dollars and ninety-eight cents.
I think we were both disappointed.

Sea Pearl

I'm fifteen   darkwater dreaming or drowning
adrift and alone on the ocean of the bathroom floor
tossed on tidal waves of pain   pearled with perspiration
a clattering clutch of shells contracting
shingle shushing stifled shrieks
the shucked shell of my womb
emptying like an oyster snared
by umbilicals of seaweed   Far away
hazy-faint through saltwater mists I see
a little pearl glistening   floating and rocking in red sea

I'm all at sea   without anchor on tides   a boat floating free
seeking a mooring in the harbour of the doctor's consulting room
her voice a deep dive   anchoring me with subtle sympathy
through muffled underwater sounds   sea-shadowy fog shawling me

I want to tell her about the dream   submerged stories of a tiny pearl
maroon-mangled and foam-spangled   slipping slowly from me
into scarlet sea   drifting away   sinking to darkwater depths

Driving home my mother's rings clink like shells against the steering wheel
and a shaming sea of silence fills the car   pretty shells shucked and shocked

FOUR by FOUR a quaternion

quaternion looks poetically (using any form)at a topic from 4 aspects -

in this example seasons 

WINTER
in
anger-
whips up the waves,
pounds the shingle
shore
SPRING
in
action-
brings to life
and feathers its
nest
SUMMER
so 
lazy-
rests the soul
and flowers the
land
AUTUMN
so
mellow-
scents and sounds
in the harvest
home.

QUATERNION explained

WINTER
in
anger-
whips up the waves,
pounds the shingle
shore
SPRING
in
action-
brings to life
and feathers its
nest
SUMMER
so 
lazy-
rests the soul
and flowers the
land
AUTUMN
so
mellow-
scents and sounds
in the harvest
home.

To Give and To Receive

To Give and to Receive
(Part I)
By Franklin Price
05/08/2023

Looking back upon my life
To the days when I was young
Did not know where I was going
My shingle not yet hung

Was the youngest in the family
Altogether there were nine
Two brothers and four sisters
And two parents that were fine

Had a roof above my head
Never hungered for a bite
Always slept within a warm bed
When I rested for the night

My parents were the very best
Always taught me right from wrong
There were places I should be
And ones where I did not belong

Went to church on every Sunday
In the morning and the eve 
Where I continued learning
How to give and to receive

From the first times I remember
Christ was always in my life
He was always by my side
Through all happiness and strife

His hand was on my shoulder
To guide my steps along the way
I wonder, if 'twas not for Him,
Where I would be in life today
(End Part I)

Dune

Ever moving
The migration by wind and water
As the sands shift with time
Changing the face
The feel
The look.
As sea laps, wind blows
Longshore drift
Collect
Deposit
Ever moving sands
Passing us by
Marking time
Ever soft and smooth
Nature abhorring a vacuum
Growth and life
Migrating
Evolving
Flourish and wilt
Flower and dieback.
Fixed to an ever-moving
Ever changing due. Clinging to the lip of the sea.

Agony

The agony

He is not driving today to Lisbon to see a surgeon
who will check if the operation was successful 
The nervous tension of the day of waiting has brought
in the shingle an illness so utterly depraved.
He has been partially successful in pretending the pain
had nothing to do with him and the ability to function 
but there are nights when the illusion does not work
and he sinks into a vortex of suffering he cannot share
as sympathy from those concerned can bring on
a feeling that life is unfair to him alone.
The world is on the very cusp of a nuclear war due to 
different faction vying for power, his problem is minor

Hanging Out My Shingle

Taking the vaccine for shingles
Two shot series, not a single
They say the second more than tingles
Makes you not want to intermingle
That’s okay, I’ll write a jingle
About an empty can of Pringles

Dungeness

copper burns across an endless sky
competing caws claim salt, surf and sand 
sailing high above slowly sagging carcasses 
long forgotten at the edge of the world 

buckled rails swim over a shimmering shingle sea
the largest of its kind, hinting at some other time; 
engines once chugged to billingsgate from this beach
herring bound for the cinque ports

and they say women dragged each boat -
pulled them down to that shore’s faithless embrace;
the muttered prayers of mothers and daughters
casting their men out on fortune’s dark waters

now nets, set for a tide that came and went, lay
mouldering among those collapsing clinkers
as if the fisherfolk just left one night, fled
granting the gulls sole control of that desolate dominion

their toil and trade, the legacy of our fathers’ fathers
still lays there on that beach; haunts that huge cove
rich history, like in so many places, fading away 
rotting, rusting, ruined

At the Shore of Self

I have walked
              on the grinding edge
of my wind-sharpened shores,
              have talked of myself
beside the surf of myself.

I am grown thin in the service of
        speaking thoughts out loud.

Where the shingle washes
beached starfish,
long-drowned words uncoil
                to raise my voice
above a roaring silence.

Still, an in-coming tide
swallows and forgets,
        swallows and forgets.

Storm-Tide At Robin Hoods Bay

The steep steps go down
the winding wash,
along the plodded cobbles
between the cottages
with their smuggling hollows,
their sleet rinsed eaves.

Beyond the scarp
the bay tumbles over
shingle, shale, and scree
to a shore and its contesting tide.

Above my flying coat,
the huddled village
bobs and floats in a flooding cloud.
I could throw a stick
at the sea here
and the wind, like a dog
would fetch it,
elemental voices
return from the deep.

Now a chopping fray,
squabbles at a brim where
flurries of tern and guillemot
trawl for brill;
a pell-mell of light
roiling on a harrying spray.

Today, I allow myself to fail
here at the surging squall,
and crashing crests;
to lapse and founder -
to be redone in the one gulp
of self.

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

This one was written a pretty long time ago,
but recently fiddled with.

Wave Upon Wave

I love to walk barefoot
along the shore
the imprint of my footprints 
follows me like a shadow
I know they’ll vanish
as each wave breaks
rushing over the shingle
tickling my toes

I stop
and turn to face the sea
hoping to espy a seal
suddenly a little wave appears 
and a black head pops up
bobbing up and down
in the ocean 

Alas,
this magical moment
is marred
by squawking seagulls
circling overhead
as they follow a trawler
heading home 
with catch of the day
I wave to the fishermen
and continue on my walk


''W'' New Poems Poetry Contest

Sponsored by Constance La France

11/24/21

They Are Gathering

The gulls are gathering,
they mob, they scream,
they vie with each other
to lunge upon the unseen.

America, those first bold steps
of your eventful arrival,
your first imprints trod
upon this great land
are beginning to surface
here on the beach -
but now there is a whiff,
a stench of much heaped decades
of betrayal and corruption.

Those inaugural shoeprints
of imperial venture and high hope
are surfacing to be seen;
like dead fish they appear
upon the tainted shingle and sand.

There is a stink America,
the rapacious gulls are gathering
they swoop upon the long lamented,
feed upon the ghostly whispers
of what could
and should have been.

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