Save The Day, A Tidepool Meditation by Laura Celise Lippman

Photo by Sunira Moses

Save The Day, A Tidepool Meditation
By Laura Celise Lippman
Published Issue 125, May 2024

Some days, a quiet stillness 

pervades Puget Sound’s brooding edge, 

rippling, tentative, deep.

I cherish that 

piece of peace as 

the sea lets me be.

Kelp breathes as it oscillates,

dancing to a hushed melody,

shimmying with the tide.

Small salt pools

are a contrast in motion.

Nothing is still;

tiny forms visible 

to the careful eye dart 

in seeming random motion.

Shrimps and caprellids

wander with staccato grace

among swaying fronds.

If they settle too long, 

they provide a predator’s feast.

In a miracle of survival,

pastel eggs, attached 

to eelgrass and sargassum, 

persevere.

Even in my quieted state,

I must remain alert

to scan the horizon

for towering dorsal fins 

and the lurking encroachment

of fire and smoke.


Laura Celise Lippman has been a physician, a botanist and an aspiring marine biologist in the Pacific Northwest.  Much of her poetry is seen through the prism of the natural world. She is co-author of the book, Writing While Masked, Reflections of 2020 and Beyond.  Her poems have appeared in Crosswinds, El Portal, New English Review among other publications.