Beaches

'What are all these fragments for, if not to be knit up finally'
- Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

The things we gather from beaches,
bring home, scatter on window sills,
ledges, in patio and garden beds -
in our core the wild edges
where borders fray and bleed their colours
into sky and sea.

We gather from beaches
Sophia's messages randomly strewn
on dimpled sand - stippled starfish, crab claw,
carapace, this coiled shell, this pitted
pumice stone, a piece of coral,
driftwood, feather, bone.

Day washes over us, rippling
tide pools, swaying fringed green weed.
Across the sweep of sky light spills
a palette of turquoise, aqua, gold, grey -
gull flight, surf crest, the ridged water's
bright salt shimmer.

At our feet, the jetsam of other lives
transformed, sea-smoothed, scoured clean.
Hair wild with salt wind, eyes dazzled with sun,
our footprints following - for a moment
we can see where we've been. All childhood's here,
the world's long morning.

We carry them home, gifts we share
with each other: a headful of space, the taste
of briny air, name of a bird, cloud's shape.
Fragments we salvage from the wreck. Poems.
Designs for patterning the dark, promises
of resurrection.