Beauty and Mystery is Everywhere 

 Returning Home to Seattle and Vashon

We have traveled to the Middle East and Turkey and seen many exotic things that amazed and enlightened us. Goat markets, sand dunes, ancient mosques, Petra caves, where Jesus was buried and Mary sprayed her breast milk on the wall. What more is there to see? We return to Seattle and our home on Vashon Island. Will it all seem too new, too mundane, and too uninteresting? Our friends Judy and Andy are coming to stay with us from Oxford, England. What can we show them that will be exciting? We have nothing religious to offer and no ancient architecture. But one wet morning we take them to the garden under the sea... it has its own mysteries and magic.  Judy writes a poem about our experience. How can it be this is the first time we have seen this beauty right in our backyard?  

Under the Vashon Ferry Dock 

Low Tide on Vashon

Judy Molyneux

Low tide on Vashon

Amongst the pylons

Under the bridge to the ferry

Drenched In the rain.

Dark damp dripping down

Squirting geezer through

Black sand of the Giant Clam

Untouchable burrowing down

The art gallery decorating

The forest of posts all in lines

We gradually see them becoming

Denser and denser as we walk on.

All sizes of star fish Splayed in groups

Above the ground In clumps on posts.

Left behind by the dropping tide Dead or alive?

The tide is turning,They will survive.

Deep rich purples, lustrous glistening

On rough rubbery flesh. They do not move

Or respond to touch. They cling to the posts:

hosts of tentacles immobile, hosts off stars.

And interlaced are varying colours,

Blood red stripped through with conker-brown;

golden glow almost yellow, peeling off the post

Are these spikes teeth, a mouth?

And here's a cream mess hanging from wood to sand

No tentacles. is it glue, is it slime, is it alive?

Untouchable, And here's a blob on the ground.

Prod with toes, it recoils.

Shining orange anemone twins sit together

Glowing in this dark place

And near by some fine minute tentacles like mycellae

with a washed white empty crab shell.

Reflecting in shallow saline with floating weed

A secret water garden In miniature

through my phone camera lens. Living art

In a forest of pylons beneath the bridge to the ferry.

Carolyn Photographer 

Judy the poet and Andy her husband