Rock of dust
Worn by turns
In the hand
Of the infinite

All things they are both old and young.
Here, the lesson, sit and listen
To the turning, rattled waves,
Who pull their quarry from the beaches
With each successive tidal tongue.

Beach sluice cuts to sea through sand;
River black among the roughs, the buffs and greys,
I found a pebble in its delta,
Shining smoothly for a searching hand.
Stick pried it from the stream of eons,
Rubbed it thumb dry for its colours,
And laid it heavy on my coat,
Clacked atop a second rounded pick.

I cannot know the stone it was,
But know its density of age.
Found it like I'd found a child;

Physics points us to the strange
Mysteries of the touch and taste;
Commune with they that's not ourselves.

I do not know how things compound.
In your stillness
Attractions of your own abound;
My hand blindly finds your comfort
Quickened, drowning in the oceansound.

Til now unknown, a simple rock,
A rock among them all,
Who by dint of chance or luminescent will,
Met me.

Every pebble made of patience,
Til it's moment, stays a stone.
Inscrutable, uncountable, hidden radience;
Eternities becoming known.

Graeme Walker, 2019