Wedding poem

Today I did my math paper using as a desk a framed rendition of a poem with photo of Cal and me at the beach that Susan made back in 2000. After Grace and I had finished our maths, she noticed this poem, written as a wedding gift by Luci Shaw 25 years ago:

Seeing the Shore--for Calvin and Deborah, November 12, 1983

At ebb tide the sands are stretched--
flat, damp, written on with the rain, woven
with a warm air from the west. Stitches
from gulls' feet join dunes with sea
as the tide moves in again
and each succeeding wave spells
a new boundary in a sweeping sentence
punctuated with foam. Its drawing back
pulls a silver foil across the slope.
The film flows, thins, clouds
like a breath-touched mirror, sinks
into the body of the shore.

Your marriage is a beach--a spread
of weeds and wet edges and shells
(pink-lipped, unanchored seeds from the
sea-floor, left in the open air at
high tide, like love-notes).
Now let the seasons shift your singing
sands, let the wind lift and level you,
let water--salt, or fresh from the sky--
shape all the grainy contours
of your joining into ribs and rivulets
and pools for snails and
sea anemones. Let the roar and roll
of breakers polish the quartz and agate
in your detritus. Like gulls, move
with the movement; have no fear; the edges
of the earth, the rims of rock are a
foundation under you. You will not
be swept out to sea.