The ocean murmurs to the beach

and all the grains of sand

of each tide’s potent transience,

listen; silt and shingle understand

time tumbling through liquid hands,

shipping news, travel plans,

lost civilizations

and

then that next great, ingulfing wave expands beyond where you think it should,

globes in grains, mumbles in wombs

as rockpools are replenished,

covered footprints in the dunes

and yet sea and strand remember us

as ocean mutters to its returning land.

Antonia Sara Zenkevitch

First two lines were given by Sonya Annita Song