On the Beach: Water Sings Blue: Ocean Poems by Kate Coombs

TIDELINES

OCEAN DRAWS ON THE SAND.
WITH TRINKETS OF SHELL AND STONE.
THE WAY I WRITE ON THE SIDEWALK,
WITH A STICK OF CHALK AT HOME.

SEA SIGNS HER NAME IN LETTERS
LONG AND WAVY AND CLEAR.
SAYING, "DON'T FORGET ME--
---I WAS HERE...
WASSS HERE,
WASSSSSS HERE."

Inexorably drawn to the sea as we are, humans have a fascination with its edge, where land ends and the ocean begins. What we find and see there has a mystery, a glimpse of life in another world, one where water is the breath of life and the source of everything. From its sandy-beach-with-footprints endpapers to the last sigh of the retreating tide, poet Kate Coombs latest, Water Sings Blue (Chronicle Books, 2012), is like a day at the beach, leaving the dark town "with its closed brown shutters and doors" to take a boat down the bay to shore, where seagulls soar and Frank the Hermit Crab sets up his real estate office--with everything from a modest periwinkle cabin to a kingly conch shell for the wealthy beachgoer--and the beachcomer can shop in a tidal pool ("They carry everything there... mussels by the bushels..."). There are lyrical metaphoric lines, evoking Shelley, such as these from "Sand's Story."

WE USED TO BE ROCKS.
WE USED TO BE STONES.
WE STOOD PROUD AS CASTLES,
ALTARS AND THRONES.

NOW WE GRIND AND GRUMBLE,
HUDDLED AND GRAVE,
AT THE TOUCH OF OUR BREAKER
AND MAKER, THE WAVE.

Coombs' metaphors can be comic, as she compares seagulls to beagles ("All they think about is food!"), until they are transformed instantly when they leap into the air:

... WHEN SEAGULLS TAKE WING,
THEY BECOME A NEW THING.
ATTAINING SOME DIGNITY.

BUT BEAGLES ARE ROUND
AND REMAIN ON THE GROUND,
PRETTY MUCH DIGNITY FREE.

Water Sings Blue lets the readers soar with the seagulls, swim for their lives from the shark and cringe from the "black hole" of the oarfish's maw, undulate and trail with the jellyfish, shine and splash with seafoam, and lease a summer place from Frank the Hermit Crab, in a wonderful collection of lovely and lyrical, humorous and ironic, and downright captivating poems in many styles, haiku to couplets, free verse to classic form. This new book is as refreshing as a sea breeze and as heart-touching as an "ILY" written in the sand. Perhaps the best poetry book for children of all ages of this season, finely and fittingly illustrated by the talented Meilo So.

As the Wall Street Journal reviewer says, "A feeling of sweet delicacy pervades the pages," and Publishers Weekly adds, "Coombs punctuates her sweeping, lullaby-like poems about the ocean with surprising personification and unexpected imagery."

I say, get this book and read it to anyone who will listen, really listen to it. Like holding a conch shell to the ear, it is the sound of the sea.