Picture courtesy: Cookies and mug by Alina Matveycheva, Pexels.

Sanaa here (aka adashofsunny) delighted to host Open Link Night today and Live edition on Saturday.     

You can link up one poem of your choice below or write to the optional mini prompt which we are offering today.     

This is a live edition, but we will only have one opportunity to join on Saturday at 10 AM New York Time. The session will run on Google Meet.     

Please click on the link below to join us on Saturday: 

https://meet.google.com/vbr-xvjw-eay

Now for the mini prompt:  

I would like you to take inspiration from the opening line from Edna St Vincent Millay’s poem “Low tide.” 

These wet rocks where the tide has been, barnacled white and weeded brown.

What makes “Low Tide” by Edna St. Vincent Millay especially subtle is the way it blends outer landscape with inner emotion so seamlessly that it becomes difficult to separate the two. 

First, the poem appears to be simply an observation. Millay carefully describes a coastal scene at low tide—wet rocks, drying seaweed, distant foam, and seabirds moving across the quiet shore. The image of the tide withdrawing creates a sense of stillness and emptiness. On the surface, the poem feels like a calm moment of watching the sea. 

But gradually the poem shifts inward. The speaker begins to question the feeling the scene creates in her. She wonders whether the melancholy comes from the wind, the ebbing tide, or the birds’ cries. These questions reveal an important psychological process: the speaker is trying to determine whether her mood is caused by the landscape or by something within herself. 

The final realization— “Or some old loneliness?”—suggests that the feeling is not entirely produced by the environment. Instead, the natural scene has awakened a deeper, long-standing loneliness within the speaker. Nature acts as a mirror that reflects an emotion already present in her mind. 

This is why the poem is psychologically complex. The tide becomes a symbol of emotional ebbing—a quiet draining away of warmth, companionship, or vitality. Yet the poem does not dramatize this feeling; it presents it gently and almost casually, which makes the loneliness feel even more real and human. 

In this way, Millay shows how ordinary moments in nature can suddenly uncover hidden emotions, reminding us that landscapes often echo the quiet states of our inner lives. 

Picture courtesy: Rocky shoreline with seaweed and ocean waves by Zeynep, Pexels.

If you choose to use the optional prompt, you can use the line, the photo, both or just one. The prompt is open until Sunday at 3:00 p.m. Please do join us at the live session at 10 am New York Time. Have fun and see you on the poetry trail!