Marlow’s Listener

Wind on tide,
shifting and sorting
shingle on strand

Sand shifts, silt sails,
each to its site
sieved to its size

Tide retreats, leaves
trophies of detritus
in honor of Nike

Idling next come couples
picking pebbles skipped
the day before

Fat wood, bull like
lines the littoral pushed
not yet pulled again adrift

Ice recedes ten thousand years
to come again in another ten
or not at all

Jumbled, fumbled, abraded,
at every point and twice
a day, we live ashore