Beach After Storm

The largest stones are piled against the sea-wall since that huge storm, a hundred years ago. For the sea will never leave the beach alone – might you think it would fling the smallest stones the furthest? No – to re-assert its power, it challenges the heftiest resistance, with inexhaustible, ruthless determination rolling, thrusting, flinging in impatient storm the largest, furthest; then grading with such patient delicacy over the years, the smooth but fine-scratched stones of so many colours – how can it have found, how long for it to find, so many lucent colours of wet stone? These sometime finds – searching with a child’s fine eye – of purest pebbled marble - how many thousand miles has the sea rolled these from southern shores? And these smooth stones of reddest brick, or rubbed, etched glass? Or ancient serpentine, bright green? Then after a night of wildest storm, the air intoxicating with its ozone, new treasures thrown up on the beach: green glass globes from fishing nets, cork mats, boat wood, torn seaweed in thick chunks like beached, exhausted octopods; the beach re-shaped; even some parabolas of sand while the seethe… keesh… of the dying storm draws incessantly, then spews the finest shingle in its maw like a hungry concrete-mixer. The beach spreads out its shining, wet new treasure for the child-bright eye. This afternoon, the rock pools will be full; all will be new; sea-god a child again.