Poems by Coralyn Johnson

Tide Pool

by Coralyn Johnson

From Canary Summer 2021

Coralyn resides in the Upper Salt Creek watershed in Palatine, Illinois.

From where I’m sitting half in the sand, half in the water of the Atlantic, I spy a little girl who can’t be more than five years old, climbing along some rocks near the shore. I’ve been observing the tide retreating back into the ocean and, like the tide, the final stragglers are packing up their umbrellas and leaving the beach. The sun is dipping below the horizon line, the sky waiting to burst into flaming colors.

My hands and feet make deeper and deeper impressions in the sand, and the water pools around me where I sit. I watch as the little girl gazes into one of the newly-formed tide pools and see her eyes fill with wonder. She reaches down to touch whatever has caught her attention, but she draws back her hand at the last second. I can see the desire written on her face to reach her hand unto the pool, but her fear of the unknown stops her.

“Daddy! Mommy! I found a swimming pool for the stars!” Her parents hardly glance over at their daughter’s exclamation.

“Lily, sweetie, come help pick up your sand toys. It’s time to go,” her mom calls out, completely ignoring Lily’s discovery. It saddens me that she’ll have to leave without knowing what she’s found. Lily looks over to where her parents and her brother are packing up their cooler and beach towels. I see her look from her family back to the tide pool and back to her parents again, gauging whether or not she has time to explore what she has found. She squats down to see the “pool of stars,” and I’m sitting just close enough to hear her whisper, “Hi, Starry. Hi, Pinky.” I smile to myself at the names she’s chosen.

“Lily!” her mom shouts at her.

“Coming, Mom!” Lily says. She whirls around to race over to her family waiting for her, but in her haste she loses her balance on the slippery rocks. Her foot catches in one of the rocks, and she lands on her hands and knees in one of the tide pools. Her parents drop everything in their hands to rush over to their daughter. Lily wails as her parents reach her, and her dad scoops her up into his arms and holds her close. Their soothing quickly calms Lily down and the tide pool is soon forgotten.

The family rushes to gather the rest of their belongings and quickly leaves the beach, probably in hopes that no other crises will spoil their evening. Hurrying now, the family leaves their remaining uneaten food where they had been sitting, not just the food, but the plastic bags, trays, and bottles that it was stored in.

I look around the now empty beach, which I see is indeed empty of people, but not of the debris the people have left. There are cans littering the beach and wrappers fluttering in the breeze. I see one seagull land next to a tray of half-eaten French fries and feast on the remains. The garbage everywhere fills me with despair. No matter how hard I try, I cannot understand how people spend all day here, basking in the sun, enjoying the beauty of the water and taking advantage of nature, and then throw their garbage on the ground.

These events of the past few minutes dredge up a forgotten memory. It’s the story of when I first discovered tide pools for myself, a story almost identical to that of little Lily and her day at the beach.

“Apa look!” I called to my grandpa. “I found something!”

“You found a tide pool,” he explained to me.

“What is a tide pool, Apa?”

My grandpa thought very carefully before saying to me, “Ridley, a tide pool is a magnifying glass of the ocean. A tiny glimpse of the beauty that lies underneath the waves. People often fail to understand how special the ocean is, how special Nature is. Tide pools remind me to appreciate the things we can’t always see.”

I gazed into the tiny pool and stared in awe of what I saw.

“What’s that one, Apa?” I said, pointing to a spiky ball in the pool. “Can I touch it?”

My grandpa laughed and exclaimed, “No! That’s called a sea urchin and it’s very sharp. It could sting you too.”

“What about that one?”

“That’s a striped shore crab. Don’t touch that one either, unless you want to get pinched,” my grandpa explained to me, pinching my side and sending me into a fit of giggles.

“Apa, can I touch any of them?

“No Ridley, these creatures are better off left alone; we don’t want to risk hurting them. Especially the ones that pinch and sting. As long as we leave them alone, they leave us alone too.”

We silently watched the tide pool for some time before the tide started to rise again. I looked around at the tide pools filling with water again and started to cry. “Where are they going, Apa?” I said in desperation.

“Oh, Ridley, it’s not to worry. It’s nap time for the sea stars and snails. And speaking of nap time, we need to get home soon before Ama gets angry with me,” he said to me with a mischievous wink.

We started to walk down the coast, and I suddenly stopped in my tracks. “Will the tide pools come back?”

“Yes, of course they will.” He paused to think before adding, “Ridley, you know how you got so sad when the pools started to disappear?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Beautiful things, like the ocean and all of the magnificent creatures in it, need to be protected or they will disappear. And they might not come back.”

“Forever and ever?”

“Yes, my dear, forever and ever.” But don’t worry. As long as we do our job to protect them, they will get to stay.”

“Do you know why your name is Ridley?” my grandpa asked me, changing the subject.

“No, Apa.”

“Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle. The most endangered sea turtle and the smallest. When you came into this world, Ridley, your mother knew that you had to be protected and kept safe, just like the endangered turtle.”

“I’m named after a turrrtttle. I’m named after a turrrtttle,” I sang, skipping down the shoreline.

The memory after that is blurry, but what was important has stuck with me for all these years. Unlike Lily’s parents, my grandpa took the time to explain to me, in terms that a five-year-old could understand, that the carelessness of our species would be the end of others. He warned me about the dangers of human impact on the world before I had even grown out of nap time.

I suddenly realize that there still might be something I can do to help Lily understand this too. I sprint to catch up to the small family, just as they are loading up their minivan. Her parents are occupied with piling the cooler, boogie boards, and other toys into the back of the car.

I don’t waste time trying to explain myself to her parents but head straight toward Lily. Her mom spots me and races me to where Lily is sitting, grabbing my arm to keep me from her daughter.

“Lily!” I say, panting a little from the short sprint to their car. I make no move to wrestle myself from her mom’s grip. The little girl looks up at me from her buckled car seat, and her eyebrows knit together in confusion as she covers her eyes with her tiny hands. But her fear is short-lived once I say, “Lily, I know about the swimming pool for the stars.”

She takes her hands from her face. Her eyes grow wide and she whispers, “You do?”