Ronnie McGinn's Poetry Page

The short lines in this week's poem by Clare Murphy of The Douglas Writers Group create a sense of picturesque intensity.

The rhythm is measured and regular, expressing the mood of beauty with deliberate and casual action in a scene that we can all so readily identify with.

The imagery is not be faked by over-statement and such is the effect of the poem that we feel we are witnessing a scene of three dimensional beauty.

Sea shells

Children gathering sea shells
in buckets
on the sandy shores,
Running here and there
searching.

Seeking and finding
Another species
just one more.

Cockles, mussels, periwinkles,
oysters, limpets
and common whelk.

All assessed and counted,
then laid out
in jigsaw patterns
on strand or sea-wall.

A cornucopia of colour

A pretty picture

A carpet of shells.

© Clare Murphy