On the beach

After the Friday Haiku, the Monday Metaphor?? Perhaps not. I don't feel I really need another regular strand on this blog... Just another of my occasional poetic offerings.

One of the first things my wacky friend (no, I mean 'whacko') The Poet ever told me, when we met a little over a year ago, was that she was working on a piece built around the line "Who am I to say what gleams?" I have never learned what became of that; maybe she abandoned it. Anyway, I was intrigued, fascinated by the thought - though severely out of sympathy with it. It seemed immediately suggestive of a depressive and/or insecure streak in her nature; and although I have the former in spades, the latter completely passes me by - I don't think I ever ask myself a "Who am I to...?" question: I tend to believe that I have a right to an opinion on everything!

This, then, is my favourite of a number of short pieces I wrote back then in response to this stimulus. One of my 'instant poems' - my best stuff always seems to just plop into my head as I wake up in the morning (particularly if waking indecently early, after a slightly disordered night's sleep).... as if left under my pillow by The Poem Fairy.


Gleaming

Of a billion pebbles on the beach
The shiny one catches our eye
We pick it up, admire, caress
Want to take it home
But would not leave the beach poorer
So put it back
Thinking we will find it again

If it is bright enough
We will