! Jewels Of The Beach

Plash…keesh… plash…keesh the waves throw themselves onto the pebbly beach, but as if they regret their own angry generosity, pull back a sieved undertow of finer pebbles mixed with rogh toe-grating sand; their generosity the swathe of larger pebbles which gleam like jewels, before the salt-water dries them into centuries of scratched, scoured surface, dull as familiarity. That swathe of jewels – magic to a child; but now I’m older, yields a mental miracle of nature ceaselessly at work: green bottle-glass pebble – rounded to a smooth, safe shape for the child to spot and pick up – that’s easy to trace: from fishermen’s magic globes, the net-floats, or bottles thrown carelessly overboard on some romantic cruise.. white chalk – that’s easy too: final shape whose roundness may resist at last the restless sea chewing away at Dover’s so emotive cliffs; just the right size for a tiny fist to write on concrete; it could write but scratch that slate or blackboard with its ABC. a gorgeous mottled red: as if from pillar of some exotic Eastern temple; a closer look suggests some mighty compression of the earth that’s left a substance just about halfway between soft Devon clay and harder granite; and here a softer red; shaped from some brick the sea has stolen from some poor defence; but that will write too, stir a first artistic effort setting off the white; but leave a trace of itself on that small, tight fist; now the shades of green – the hardest stone, serpentine, which glows when wet or waxed: how long did this stone take to shape – and then to roll on ocean floor from distant shore and ancient mountain range? a whole range of semi-transparent yellow-browns, agate and suchlike, best when wet; their structure easily breaks down, too small for fun; but here’s a slatey grey, veined with white, as if some modern sculptor had seen its possible potential, smoothed it with a loving hand; nature, says the aesthete, meeting art.. the occasional alabaster sparkler just survives; so dull now, that you’ll need to smash it first; but here’s the pride of all this sea-tossed mile of treasure trove: a ravishing, smooth, moon-white marble, maiden aristocrat; how long, how far, to roll and sieve this like some ageless prospector sieving for gold or diamond? what Greek palace tipped by an earthquake into a blue Aegean sea? Into the crummy pocket of the shorts that one goes, to line up with its kinsfolk on the window-sill.. a sea-shore (you can hear it in the word itself..) , a beach, a child with blowing hair and eager eyes; these two spell happiness; live nature’s most compatible.