Nan Cohen
Shore Elements
Sand, packed hard. Or shifting underfoot.
Or loose and grainy in the hand.
Water, in several forms:
Deep, deep, and darkening down to depths;
clear sheet calmly rinsing sand;
foam, almost ethereal.
Music almost like silence, or silence like music.
Exactly halfway between silence and music.
And I, who love the come and go,
the taking and leaving behind
(if love means trying to understand),
pause here, where they seem to be the same—
I mean the moving and the staying still.
Nan Cohen reads “Shore Elements”
Nan Cohen is the author of two books of poems, Rope Bridge (2005) and Unfinished City (2017). The recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and a Literature Fellowship from the NEA, she co-directs the poetry programs of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and lives in Los Angeles.