Soft Sometimes
low tide, down
where river meets ocean
oystercatcher song amber breath in,
slow, purple haze release.
low ebbs keep pulling us in
icy waters deceptively blue
receding, receding, receding.
instead of fighting, what if we just let
go.
will we drown
or can we stay
rooted and still like soft strands of kelp
patient in our waiting for our tides to turn high again?
I thought the day was done
but one more piece / peace
of solid smooth poetry
will not let me go - not until it has found its own way
home.
the eider ducks in their tuxedoes are calling
ah uuuh ah uuuh ah uuuh.
I used to call them wolf ducks
for their howling offshore when you were little
and now
on another shore on another continent nearly twenty years
and so many low tides later, we lie side by side
soft sometimes -
amber and purple and calling to each other remembering
ah uuuh ah uuuh ah uuuh. and I love
how that still makes you smile.
Amanda Cruise is an artist, writer and healer who grew in Rome and New York city as a third culture kid. Her work includes photography, painting, printing, land art, poetry, and memoir. Her poetry has been published in The Noyo Review, The Bloom, and this summer in the Spirit of Place: Mendocino County Women Poets Anthology and Kelp Book's 2025 Ocean Poetry Anthology. Her photography and other artwork have been exhibited in the US, Germany, Netherlands, Turkey and Thailand. Her creative path, like her life, continues to be non-linear and she likes it that way. She currently lives on a cliff above the ocean in Mendocino on Northern Pomo land and loves to make stone balance sculptures by the ocean, eat homegrown artichokes, play her hand pan, talk to the plants in her garden and drink tea, exuberantly. Website - amandacruise.com
