Let’s Just Nuke The Ice Caps
Onwards to the wavesurfing new nations!
Towards blue horizons and glistening shellscapes!
No dirt for my roots to cling me to,
No clocks save the tide.
To sleep with the fish and wake with the seagulls,
To greet the day with wet worship,
The Moon my Father, the Wind my Mother, the Water my World:
A trinity ripe with divinity, a life source still living.
A sandbar lifestyle with plexiglass determination.
How soon until the seas rise?
How long is too long?
I want to sink these beaches,
I want to never know land again.
To sing praise of salt and shoreline,
To hear a victory theme of my ocean mind;
I will ride these waves of mine.
I have trouble sticking to a meter and I don’t try to rhyme on purpose. A pattern of “pairs” of lines that begin in the same words is the main feature. Every line begins with a one syllable word. The exception lines to this are the first two, which both begin with similar words, onwards & towards, but they both also end in exclamation marks, the only two in the poem. The line that begins with “the” does not have a paired line, but instead has 3 internal repetitions, breaking the pattern with an over-repeat but containing itself in one line, so the pattern is preserved outside of it.
Alliteration is also abundant in many lines, almost always only on “water” words, like wet, sea, water, salt. The line breaking this pattern is line 8, which is both a companion to the pattern-breaking line 7 but is also the pair to the pattern-maintaining line 9. This line also could have been two lines, so it pairs inside of itself as well. The alliteration in this line could still be argued to follow the water-word pattern, since it is referring to the combination of wind+moon+water, but if you don’t go with that, the alliteration is “reflective”, that is, l s s l. This standout line, which goes both with and against the pattern, also contains the only in-line rhyme (trinity/divinity). It is paired with the only non-water use of alliteration, so it still manages to maintain a commitment to the pattern.
So we get down to the end, where the final line at first seems to stand alone, unpaired. However, recall line 7. It broke the pattern of 2 by having 3, but it was about a trinity. Line 8 was paired to both it and the line after, keeping continuity with the 3. The last line begins like 12 & 13, so it is connected as a 3. It is separated from the other two by the two lines between, but wait! The last 3 lines all share end-rhyme together (line/mind/mine), maintaining both the trinity and the pair (To sing/ To hear).
You could also call it a pattern to stick to continuous imagery. The scene I tried to show was that of living on the ocean, living a surfer’s life but never actually leaving the ocean. Very Tao, very Be Here Now. No permanence, but security and peace in the assured ebb and flow of the tides and waves.