Beneath Our Feet

 

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.