Joining the Poetry Party: The Path Shimmers

With a beautiful image and an evocative title, Christine at Abbey of the Arts has inspired another Poetry Party this week:

Photo of the shores of the Hood Canal; copyright Christine Valters Paintner

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Here is my contribution:

Grain of sand
in my hand
Tell me your story.

Born in fire
Thrust up as magma
I spread slowly along the ocean’s floor
Sliding, splitting, shoving
Cooling to a crust.

When tectonic plates collided
I reached for the sky
and became the crystalline face of a mountain peak,
raw material
that nature’s elements sculpted.

The world turned cold.
Ice carved, sheared and fractured my form.
I became rubble,
Locked in a frozen lake.

When the sun’s warm touch
released me from my glacial prison,
I tumbled down ridges and trenches, streams and rivers,
Carried by currents of water and air
That dropped me at the ocean’s shore.

Now I follow the tide’s ebb and flow,
Dancing with the waves,
Resting in shallow pools,
Creating whorls and ripples of beachscape,
Reflecting starlight.

Shimmering quartz
on warm skin,
one thing I know for sure:

We are from dust
and to dust we shall return.