Watching waves does not mean I understand them. Here is what I think I know.

Minus Tide

There is an impulse
--energy, a genie, an epiphany. Wind or a boat--
and a body that receives it.
In this case, water.

The form that results is articulated by the conditions it encounters: rocky point, plunging shore.

For the watcher, a vocabulary of line, shape, and texture is articulated as well:

crest, 
barrel, swell,
breaker, rill, trough, 
spume, spindrift, backwash, 

foam, cat’s paw, ripple, whitecap,
swash, surge, undertow
plume, wavelet, 
spray.

Sea Drift

Language and image act on each other.
Shorelines build and erode.

In daylight, the waves are mostly blue or gray.
 

from Regarding Wave*  a photo series
http://www.arielswartley.com/p899934871

*Thanks to Gary Snyder whose 1970 book title I appropriated. He saw very clearly what he was regarding: “Gods  tides  capes  currents/Flows and spirals of/pool and powers”