Lives: we think of people.
Life: we think of the distinction
between organisms and inorganic substance.
I walk the beach; it’s littered with shells, billions,
remnants of dead organisms and I marvel.
Barely more than blobs of protoplasm; yet their shells
beautiful, fine as china, now beneath my feet;
an unfathomable scatter becoming sand.
We ask the purpose of life;
I look at these with same question;
the intricacy of the interactions of living things;
their sequestration of carbon, recycling of nurients,
building of habitats; even now fragmenting to sand.
I think of all the beaches worldwide;
and these stars we walk on;
their infinity, if we permit it.
