Silver-spotted anemone

Breakers at high tide shoot
spray over the jetty boulders
that collects in shallow chips, depressions,

Evening the surface to run-off level:
of these possible worlds of held water,
most can’t outlast the interim tideless

Drought, so are clear, sterile, encased with
salt: one in particular, though, a hole,
providing depth with little surface,

Keeps water through the hottest day:
a slime of green algae extends into that
tiny sea, and animals tiny enough to be in a

World there breed and dart and breath and
die: so we are here in this plant-created oxygen,
drinking this sweet rain, consuming this green.


World, by A.R. Ammons