Sometimes I don't want to be crystal clear in a poem, even a short poem. Sometimes I want the reader to figure out the meaning without having it spelled out. Poems that make you work a bit tend to last longer in the memory, I believe.
This one, written as far back as 1993 and published in my first collection - Thirteen Ways of Looking At the Highlands (Diehard, 1996) - is an example. To have been explicit here would have been wrong. It's a very short poem, but probably needs reading two or three times. I've long forgotten where the particular setting was, but it was a beach with shallow water where you could walk out a considerable distance without getting out of your depth.
I haven't read it in public for years, but every time I did read it, someone would come up to me and ask, 'Did you mean ... ?' And yes, I did. The sea is a scary place, and maybe it's not always obvious why it is. Sometimes you do get out of your depth.
Tides
Walking far out in the clear green sea,
watching waves at eye height
just that little bit further,
I begin to fear, not being overcome,
but losing, for no reason,
the urge to resist letting go.
Copyright © Colin Will 1996, 2015
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