Hard, like diamonds.

Flow above, around, before, behind or below.

There is no in nor through.

They can burn, so it’s said.

Hellfire has been giving its all

for decades now, yet they insist.

Crystals stand strong and hard.

They do not flow.

Break, crush, erode,

if you’ve got world enough and time.

Otherwise, live around them,

or one fine day set them aside.

Leave them. Count on them,

they’ll be waiting until you return.

For return you will, if just to visit.

They too made you you.

All you know is constellated around them.

They are not all, else you would not be here.

Walk on. Leave them be.

Go, flow. You won’t forget.

They marked you for life.

Soft waters wash across the wide reach

of shell-strewn tidal shore. Small wonders

urge plodding through sucking mud.

 

Monstrous and miraculous fellow

creatures wallow in twice-daily stranding,

subject to lunar rule.

 

Awash, await and abide the ills

that sun, and dogs, and gulls

can do; or become

perhaps a sacrifice to the

oh-so-human pleasure

of naked curiosity.

 

Plucked as lightly from the sand alive

as remnants left by doomed companions,

read as chapters in a history

unmeasured by time’s rod;

these are ancestors here rudely grasped

by their inquisitive descendants.

Hope for them now lies in their simplicity,

variety and number; features not of each,

but of their kinds and worlds.

 

Peruse the scripture on an oyster’s shell,

behold the drama in the train of a horseshoe crab.