California Seashore Poem by Nellie Isabelle Steward Cooper

I came to the edge of the land
And there lay the sea as a prostrate giant
crawling along an endless sand

Far distant across her back
Ringlets of white hair dancing

As alternately upon her knees
She rose braced herself
Then fell again headlong
All diffused and scattered

As if nothing under the
blank-blue sky
forever waiting...mattered

Once again upon her knees-now collapsing

Hair flung over her face and burning
In curettes rolling up the endless strand
An eternal expanse of washing sand

Thus, she as giant forever expressing
falling and rising-falling and rising
through infinite eons of shore caressing

Should gain inch by inch hour by hour
Her place against far distant cliffs
This place marked out for her to die

Beneath the blank-blue sky