Before she died, my friend
returned
her shell collection to the sea.
It was where they belonged, she
said,
where they gleam brightest.
These are their remains
that in death make a beach.
Caressed by waves, pounded by
storms,
marked by tides,
sorted and resorted by shape and
size,
part of earth’s pattern in every day’s
new arrangement.
The tide
turns and pauses
like a breath, out and in,
then the sigh,
the wait of a moment,
the choice of life rather than
death.
And so I remember her.
When I walk the sea’s edge
and stop before a shell,
whose shape and form,
like some treasure dazzles me,
I pass by, letting the earth claim
her own.
©Anne Chappel
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