I Dwell Within a Tidal Pool
I dwell within a tidal pool;
My world, though small, is most complete.
I float around, I play the fool,
And hang with creatures that I meet.
Sea urchins are my boyhood pals,
Blue mussels open up to help
The small green crabs glide through canals
Of rockweed, Irish moss, and kelp.
I am not fish, nor crab, nor clam.
How nice to think myself so small
That I can suit this tiny realm
And leave the larger world withal.
I heed the call of every urge,
I wait to see what each day yields
As day and night, we lie submerged
And night and day we lie revealed.
The colors of my pool are vast:
Rich greens and tawny seaweed strands.
The sky above is overcast
With clouds that shade our cheerful bands
Of limpets and anemones,
Of periwinkles twinkling bright,
Of barnacles, and memories,
Of moonlit glow and starry night.
I guide our ship, stand at the helm,
Mid shifting sands and tidal swirl.
The granite rocks that shield our realm
Give comfort to our tiny world.
Small children come and play around,
They find our contours sized just right.
They pick us up and drop us down
And squeal and splash with such delight.
I dwell within a tidal pool.
I can’t suppose a better place,
So full of change, now warm, now cool,
Suffused with briny, tranquil grace.
Rob Fried is an 81 year-old emerging poet, a retired professor of education. He has authored several books, including The Passionate Teacher (1995, Beacon Press) and The Game of School (2005, Wiley). He lives in Concord, New Hampshire.
Dear Rob,
I dwell within a tidal pool.
I can’t suppose a better place,
So full of change, now warm, now cool,
Suffused with briny, tranquil grace.
absolute gold..
what a wonderful poem,
bless you,
Karen in Cambridge UK
Thanks so much, Karen, for your warm response to this poem. It was occasioned by a visit to a nearby beach where our children used to delight in the various tidal pools to be found. As soon as I saw them again, I thought, “I want to live in there.”
Rob Fried
Rob, this delightful poem is full of imagery gleaned from and appropriate to a relatively small space enclosed world with personal satisfaction and appreciation seemingly for what you, the poet, has at your stage of life. Your poem is inspiring, evocative, well-paced, and beautifully rhymed.
You make me want to dwell in a tidal pool, Rob. You make it sound idyllic.
I love the way the poem gallops along, with no overcomplicated words to trip it up. I can imagine this poem illustrated, being told at bedtime. We’ve all been those children in the penultimate stanza.
Thanks for the read, Rob.
Thanks so much, Paul, for your warm response to this poem. It was occasioned by a visit to a nearby beach where our children used to delight in the various tidal pools to be found. As soon as I saw them again, I thought, “I want to live in there.”
Rob Fried
Thank you, Rob, for this delightful and original poem, so full of charm, quiet wisdom and vivid detail, and with some lovely rhymes. Best wishes, Bruce
Your tide pool is a rich one, Rob, with a considerable variety of creatures and colors. I think that’s part of an unspoken message about choosing the temporary pool in which to dwell. In the fourth stanza, you point out that each day yields differences, as pools are submerged in the sea by high tides coming in, or revealed by low tides going out. I used to take my children to the shore to observe tide pools, where motion of sand and surf might create and fill new ones, or leave old ones with little water and life. But while they exist, these pools are wonders to explore, as your final stanza says.
An analysis of this poem compels us to raise this question: who or what is the speaker? It cannot (in the literal sense) be a human being, since the speaker talks of actually dwelling in “this tiny realm,” and of lying “submerged” in the pool, and mentions how “small children … pick us up and drop us down.” This is pretty solid evidence that the speaker is a personified minute sea creature whose life is completely contained in a tidal pool with other tiny life forms.
In that case, we must determine if this poem is just an imaginative jeu d’esprit (i.e. a playful attempt to imagine what a tiny life form in a tidal pool might say about its existence), or if is it a figurative-allegorical comment about a certain kind of human life. How should we read it? Both are possible readings, but the first one doesn’t need comment, while the second one compels us to ask this: what is the human speaker saying about his life?
It seems to me that if this poem is a kind of allegory and not a jeu d’esprit, then what is being presented to us is a picture of a highly constricted and limited life. But despite its limitation within a very small place, the life is happy and joyful and fulfilling. The speaker celebrates the minuscule world and takes great delight in it. The poem would be a way of saying “Tend your own garden,” or “Be far from the madding crowd,” or “Enjoy the delights of your little corner of the universe.” It’s reminiscent of Dorothy at the end of the Wizard of Oz, when she says “There’s no place like home!” and “I won’t look for happiness outside of my own back yard!”
The inevitable follow-up question is this — if the speaker is really a stand-in for a human being, what do we think of what he says about his life? There is, of course, no arguing with personal taste; many persons are totally content with the very small, localized, untravelled life that they lead. But many other persons are not.
Dear Joseph,
I observe (especially, funnily enough, after my year in Mexico)
that it is depth of engagement not displacement which gives joy..
Some of the happiest people I know have never travelled more than a few miles from where they were born. I found in Mexico many of the things I felt were lacking in England
but I found them not by travelling the country coast to coast
but by staying in the equivalent of two little rock pools while I was there:)
warmest regards,
Karen
I took my lead for the picture, which made the narrator a starfish, then noticed a more metaphysical aspect to the poem, making the narrator, a spirit, perhaps.
Dear Paul, Martin, C.B.,Cheryl, Karen, Joseph, Margaret, Roy: I am overwhelmed by your thoughtful, nuanced, and playfully creative responses to my Tidal Pool fantasy.
I dare not add to your varied readings of the poem other than to reiterate that it was born of a momentary glimpse into tidal pools at Newcastle Beach in New Hampshire that brought back images of our children’s fascination with life inside these tiny ecosystems, coupled with an instant desire to make myself small enough to escape our too much troubled world and play amid a more benign turbulence. Thank you all
Rob Fried
A charming poem, Mr. Fried. I like the repetition of the opening line in the final stanza.
Tidal pools are mesmerizing, though often temporary, and I can’t imagine that living in one would be the jolly life you describe, though, in a sense, we all live in our own tidal pools, a littoral microcosm in the literal macrocosm of existence, whether human or nonhuman. New Hampshire has a short coastline, but it doesn’t take much to create a tidal pool.
I love the childlike innocence of this. I found it had a de-stressing effect on me – so thank you!
What a brilliant choice of words throughout this entire poem. The repeated ones at the end tie it all together; simply a peaceful scene of ocean life. Thank you for sharing!