Shells
It's Sunday morning and I'm not at church.
I'm on the beach with a choice of shells.
Close enough this one is a spire
whose inside holds the colours of pearl.
Nothing lives here now, but I can model
the softness of the mollusc as it was,
snug as a brain in its skull,
or a hermit crab that found armour for its gut and pushed out claws
ready for anything. This top shell's like a dome
and the next is a minaret
enlightened by a single shaft into two coils of white.
Deeper in the sand, fragments from an older sea
judge history. There is hunger
in these tones of milk and honey.
Some say that each shell is like the calculus
that estimates their volume - immutable, discovered -
but I see snail before the shell
and what's become of base desire.
Lost worlds; they are too beautiful to leave
to bulldozing waves, the rush of pebbles and all the sea's detritus.
I carry them inland and place them in sunlight.
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