I’m not quite sure what drew me to look back at some of my earliest poems, but it was fascinating to be reminded what had motivated me back in 1974/5.
This poem must have been written in late 1975 and I could wish that I had had the platform of a blog then to give it a higher profile than simply inhabiting a now rather elderly exercise book. Still, better late than never! And nothing has changed. Indeed it may be worse.
A Pile of Shells
On a billion golden grains,
by a dank breakwaters side,
lies a careless heap of shells,
stranded by an ebbing tide.
Intermingled tiny stones,
polished by the seas caress,
cast a dancing light about.
from the sun-rays they possess.
Here an incandescent pink,
hides inside a banded black;
ambers, blues and deep maroons,
sparkle from the glittering stack.
Shapes so weird and wonderful,
form those tiny cast off homes;
perfect miniatures which housed.
strange crustacea in their domes.
Beauty from the sudden death,
met by creatures of the sea,
and around this cenotaph
lies the junk of you and me.
Rusty cans of ‘brown’ and ‘light’,
plastic drums for multi-grade;
strands of rubber, lumps of tar,
broken glass of every shade.
Globs of half congeal-ed oil,
polystyrene, bric-a-brac;
cast off plimsolls, broken bricks,
drums for poisonous this or that.
Think! Maybe that host of shells
would be smaller had not we
scattered wide our worldly waste,
making a trash can of the sea.
A few more earlier poems on similar topics will emerge over the next few weeks as I trawl my collection further.
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