for Polly
c sounds like sea & see
& looks like a wave curling
across the world's sweet chaos
c starts our name,
a circle with the gate left open
to wandering & possibility
c collects, cautions, catches
us when we trip & calls
our name in a cursive crowd
an, when you add a c,
moves on to opportunity;
becomes supportive, with an f,
an admirer knowing the odds,
welcoming, c-like, the challenge
a friend found this c on the beach at Hatteras;
one sunny day in the salty air, i picked the shell
from the beach on Sanibel and wrote this poem
in the wavelip slap of my mind, between the c's
my ears make, composing the water's co-opera
___________
Nov 1996/June 2011 -- poem attached to a perfect driftwood C, shell too