Your shadow drifts long across the water. Waves - crashing, turning, breaking over endless sand topography.
Waves, so loud they wash away clouds in your mind. So loud, they brighten morning sunlight. So loud, they cause you to stop, breathe— Listen, can you hear? Your eyes scan the distant whitecaps wondering. Is it as loud out there in the deep? Or is it the illusion of sound your eyes ingest? Feet slowly sink into earth puddles, comforting. Grains of sand swirl in micro-whirlpools hypnotizing - You wish that you could stand there forever, as the tide recedes, as the sun dances across the sky. A perfect path caresses the horizon with a light show. Yellow-orange sparkle kisses the confluence. A path completing you, connecting you — to the universe.
photo by: Jacob Dyer, Unsplash
What stayed with me after reading this poem is the way it captures that quiet, almost sacred moment when the world seems to pause. The waves aren’t just background noise — they feel like a kind of inner cleansing, the sort that clears space in your chest without you noticing. I love how the poem wonders whether the loudness is real or something the mind invents; it’s a question anyone who’s stood by the sea has felt but rarely says out loud. The image of feet sinking into those little pools of sand feels grounding, like the earth is gently insisting you stay still for a moment. And then the light on the horizon arrives with that soft, golden shimmer that makes you forget everything else. It turns the ocean into a path, not to anywhere in particular, but to a feeling — that quiet sense of belonging to something larger. The poem leaves you with a warmth that lingers, the kind that only summer manages to give.
Lovely images here, Joel. "Waves, so loud they wash away clouds in your mind." And that perfect path -- "A path completing you, connecting you — to the universe. I, myself, was born next to the sea. And I truly feel this poem. You found a fantastic photo and did it justice.