Harvesting the Sky

Look seaward west where

Sun’s gone down pale mauve striped pink

Cloud dimming shadows

*

That photographer

With his spotlight on the beach

Where people are shades

*

The silver ocean’s

Rippled blue reflecting waves

Whishing softly by

*

Offshore windmills stand

Like far off crucifixes

Harvesting the sky

*

Spirits whisper power

To earth and air and water

Resurrecting time.

*

**

*

Photos of Scheveningen Beach, The Hague, by Freddie Oomkens

Freddie Omm’s Sicilian Haiku—Migrant Shadows, published by Mad Bear Books in September 2024, also features sunset-linked poetry, notably in Sunsets.

Sunsets explores how we idealise our lives, while being deeply suspicious of such.

Sunsets’ imagery is filtered through a rich spectrum of sundown light,  albeit Sicilian, rather than Scheveningean.

 

the sea spits out a fish

two crows watch the beach

until the sea spits out a fish

flying and then dying on the sand

*

two crows pick this fish

to pieces, scoff down their feast,

fly on back inland

*

—the crows are lucky

all the gulls were gone—they’d have

had to fight for food:

*

they’d have lost it,

weren’t it only witnessed by

a passing poet.

*

**

*

Omm

*

*

**

*

Photo by F. Oomkens

work in progress: sketch of snow, dunes, sea and dog

 

when we want to live

a life more lit and touched with

fire we need the beach

*

where sea throws us waves,

surf singed with feels we can’t share

like words lost in storm

*

light snow drifts on dunes

while wind blows cold and dry, we

walk down to the shore—

*

foam flies from the waves

like smoke, rolls on soft wet sand,

the dog sniffs, bites it;

*

sunlight’s lying on the beach–

wet, shining now the ash-curled waves sink

reflecting sky:

*

clouds of flame and ash

float through blue, hidden heaven

soaking into earth

*

sky, flames, snow and wind, waves, foam and sand,

they and all of it are never still not ever but they move us

through us as we walk, wish, stand–

*

what I see, I write,

and with my words I try to

catch the snow and light

*

**

*

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos by F. Oomkens

 

Loving Light

I

All my life I’ve loved

beaches and the beauty of

being on the edge

*

Where senses merge like

sex in sand and sky in eyes

we are everywhere

*

Feeling a moment

like lifetimes of loving light

from intense shadows

*

While feelings blur like

sea in sand and sky in air

we’re here everywhere.

II

All my life I’ve loved

beaches and their hot bodies

heating everyone

*

(Save folks or times with

lack of lust for life in sex through

mood or age or choice)

*

All my life I’ve loved

soft warm curves that turn things hard

tangling everything

*

All my life I’ve loved

those days when outlines grow so vague

you shape in the flow

*

Like waves washing worlds

that wishes made whole, oceans

smooth and connect us

*

All our lives loving

beaches and bodies and love

make us all hotter

*

And all our lives’ love

lifts us from life’s heaviness:

makes our lives lighter.

III

All my life I’ve loved

light, I’ve left darkness behind

when stuff got murky

*

At dawn if things got

sweaty I might stay on till

stuff got cool again –

*

– I get dark sometimes

too, we all do, but try to

leave darkness at dawn

*

**

*

Omm

September 2020

essence

the imagination required to see

how life grows through a series of moments

*

(at once selfcontained, static and timeless

yet flying yes swarming into infinity)

*

like flocks of geese breaking from an amber

sunset into invisibility

*

like summer nights fading in september

flown into those endless twilights of eternity

*

where sensation is becoming to where

we run blindly into fresh horizons

fading as each sunrise into darkness

this warm fleeting intimacy we share

created from those moments is the essence

*

**

*

freddie omm

big sur

september 2019

 

ventura beach revisited

 Freddie in Ventura

*

those amber sunsets

never set but hung in mind

resplendent always

*

many years before

this beach and all that’s on it

were now, were mine

*

time was not what it

now is nor is becoming

each moment stayed whole

*

the waves held me fast

while the wind blew permanence

over solid sand

*

gulls sat in the sky

as if transfixed or painted

by a maker’s hand

*

 

*

a kid on a beach

– in the timeless space of life –

that kid’s always now

*

**

*

freddie omm

ventura, september 2019

*

The first of my haiku chains about Ventura beach was published here in December 2014: on ventura beach. I wrote this new one and took the photo while revisiting the beach last week. 

holy ghosts – haiku chain

all our holy ghosts

live in us, and we in them –

love’s eternal haunting:

*
blithe spirits spook us

from deserted dunes – singing

sands, rustled by winds –

*
heartbeat-storms roil round

the beach, rouse stomping wildness,

clamour in our veins:

*
we are the children

– and parents – of the past

in love’s family

*
whose children succeed

give birth to generations

for eternity

*
mother father child

live and grow and give their love

timeless trinity

*
all our holy ghosts

live in us as we in them

we are love eternal

*
Omm

Spring 2018

zuiderstrand, the hague

from boardwalks buried
in the bed of that steep dune

you step on the beach –

*

sandscapes shift, air-borne,

you’re a visitor here, as

timelessly moving

  *

as sea waves wash off

infinite fictions of earth –

mere specks on a spot in space.

*

Omm


october 2017





shoredays, yoredays: seven haiku on a beach

DSC02124

now, then, soon – shoredays,

wave-lapped hours, wind-spun and warm

like summer kisses

*

blown in midwinter

distillated on our lips

blissed out, oh! timeless

*

yoredays – flown, but here

with you forever, come spring

and the buds and birds –

*

skies drunk on light, blue

till blacked-out, then flopping blank

on a spinning globe

*

summerled like myth,

tripping out on dewy toes –

yoredays, yours, mine, theirs,

*

the only sure thing

left is love in all our lives,

strewn along the dunes

*

days of sun, shoredays –

all transilluminated,

hewn in memory

DSC02120