I'd drop the first line, Colin -
although you use church building simles in the poem,I  think they stand on
their own.

Unles you were worried about not being in church, in which case one would
expet this to be developed in the poem, though it would be rather an odd
poem perhaps! Stick to the shells, they're  enough.

cheers
SallyE


on 25/1/06 11:52 am, Colin Dewar at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> 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.
> 
> 
> 
> ___________________________
> 
> 
> 
> 
>