There is very little here which remains

By Eleanor Grant

There is very little here which remains

Untouched, unturned

An empty shell on the shore

Upended and crushed

Beneath the foot of a careless walker –

Shattered, like it was nothing at all.

And the sea, terrible

In its renewal

Its relentless again and again

Washes it anew

The sand slick and dark, scattered

With gifts from a generous wave

I walk and remember colours I have seen,

Hands I have held, pauses I have taken –

I cannot quite put these things together.

Time passes strangely, trips

Over itself with a scuff to the toe and

A scrape to the knee

It moves jumps between now and then

But the space I cannot name is something,

Something I cannot get my hands around

Or keep between my teeth

It slips and scrambles for release, and

Though I clamp down hard enough to taste blood

The tide takes it anyway –

Selfish as it is.

I see myself at ten,

And I see myself at twenty, walk

the same trailing path with completely different routes

Tread the same earth underfoot

The same sentimentalities in my heart

I watch the tide come in

And I watch it go out, long

After the sun has dipped and the sky is dark.

Everything goes this way –

Something, and then nothing at all.

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