This messy palimpsest of beach
is reminiscent of my life:
careless marks across soft parts,
fragile structures pulverised,
timid creatures of the mind,
exposed to clumsy passers-by,
fleeing to dunes or crevices
in foreshore rocks, to hide.
To every beach there comes
the healing tongue of the nocturnal tide,
salt-stung by stars, erasing scars,
debriding lesions and abrasions,
leaving offerings of shells
on sand that gleams with trochus sheen,
a page pristine with possibility,
not yet inscribed.