Poem number five in my Poem-A-Day-For-A-Week-Or-So series. Snow outside, test cricket on the TV, beer in the cupboard. That’s my day sorted, then.
The sea sighs for you tonight.
It sucks at the shingle
And smears your footprints
Like a wet thumb rubbed across writing.
Where once you walked and left your
Prints, it gently wipes the land clean.
Lovingly it lays its cheek to the ground
And nuzzles your memory.
.
We are more than specks
In the infinity of time and space
Yet somehow we need to
Make sense of our lives.
Rock endures
But so does the wind and the rain.
More so, in fact, since in the end
Mountains are levelled
And the wind and rain remain.
.
In the end the passage of many feet
May be more durable than
Dwellings of stone.
Mick Canning 
So much great imagery here, Mick. A beautiful spell to be under. We’re under a winter weather advisory, another spell to my mind, the snow sticking ethereally to everything it touches, taking my breath away, and bringing a bit of peace to the world because its so hella quiet now, an even better blessing. When we moved here to this house on a hill the stillness was part of the charm, but encroaching development has since chased the stillness down the road with its tail between its legs. We humans make more noise than any other species; I will revel in today’s spell. ;0) (see, you made me get all poetic and stuff!)
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That’s more poetic than me, Pam. The snow’s not really up to much here – certainly not living up to its advance billing as ‘The Beast from the East #2’. Still, it’s an improvement on grey, wet, and miserable.
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An improvement I’ll take any day! Well, in winter 🥶 anyway. 😂
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This brought to mind the footprints paleontologists find of ancient humans or older still…what remains…
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Yes, I’ve a feeling I might attempt a poem on those at some point. It must be a remarkable feeling to look at them.
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I can only imagine. Something akin to what I felt when I touched the ancient brickwork at Lothal…
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In my own incarnation as a palaeontologist I’ve collected hundreds of fossils, the oldest around five hundred million years old, but what gives me a tingle down the spine is touching stone circles five thousand years old, or flint tools from around fifty thousand. It’s the connection with our own human ancestors, isn’t it?
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What I wouldn’t give to hold a trilobite! Human relics though have that connection to our ancestors, true. 🙂
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Ooh, watch out for those trilobites. They’ll give you a nasty nip!
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Meaningful words which I appreciated!
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Thanks, Malcolm. Very glad you do!
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I’m enjoying your poems, Mick! You do poetry as well as you write fiction…not many people can do both!
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Ooh, thanks, Ann.
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You got me thinking, Mick.
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Ah, that’s a good thing!
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