Here on this beach, where history runs deep for those who
care to see, we build castles, plant flags along our sandy
crenellations, defying the odds. Here, where permanence
and impermanence merge, we marvel at our beachcomber
treasures: purses of eggs, frigid starfish, a once-was curl
of shell, calcified to stone. Curved to foetal, the Fibonacci
miracle is cold in our hands: no-one is home, nor has been,
this side of ancient. We crawled from sea, shrugged off
the cephalopod's spiralled mantle, working at the whole
limbs-lungs-brain thing. So here we are: beach-baked
and frozen in time, cupping unspooled ancestral relics,
trying not to think of our own remains, the brittle hollows,
someone's future find.
~
(Originally published in The Fenland Reed)
