SEA SHELLS (Edwardian Piece)
CLEARLY, as in the cameo pinned at her throat
below the whale-boned collar of lace,
I see her now with myself, a child,
intent on our ct.rious, dumb pursuit, our two heads bent
under her boater and my sailor hat—
twin marguerites.
And I, sedate and trim, in kilted suit of serge and buttoned boots, dented the loose shingle in smooth dimples of mottled stones, soon to be erased by the incoming tide.
Here on the beach our bodies nestled, and through our unequal fingers trickled
the sea-spurned loot of foreign shores—
drift of centuries, multi-coloured as the shades in her opal ring (which shouldered the pebbles like a prideful pigeon jostling a rout of sparrows).
For a child's delight her fingers probed this treasury of infinitesimal shells, sifting them delicately from the finest shingle as a poet dredges the mind for dreams, or a mother her memory for rhymes.
So found we in each exquisite shell
beauty, that kings have sought in vain,
known to the mother, the poet and the child ; while our content grew in each other, in the comfort of sea-borne silence, and marvels of almost invisible creation, revealed in the intimate shade of a boater and a sailor hat, eternally engraved on the shelving, shifting beaches of memory.
J. TEULON WOODS.
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