If you look closely at any living thing

you’ll see the stamp of every other

the tree-forking of the lungs

the way the hand cups water

like the lake

running into the valley

            the flesh that breathes                   sensing sun & heat

            the curves of the muscle                 creasing

            & then the columns of the heart

rising up like mountains

In the faintest streak of life

the little water bear floats free

in the vacuum life tastes sweet

he swims in wastes of space                    the kind volcanic fold

in heat or cold                                             always the same

cool readiness to be alive                         the aching for the world

which sees lichen                                        creeping slowly

from the ocean                                             steady lapse

moving in plant-time                      earth-time

extremophile living in ice  on soda lakes               with cosmic radiation

When the water breaks the rock              it’s like

some things were meant to be                  it’s like

the body knew the mind                             like dancers

Wash your hands in the water clock

& watch millennia drip by

the burn cradled by the rock it cut

the sea that gnawed the beach

pulling the sand far out     & flinging it back

turning stone to shingle to

infinite mosaic of crystal

a world made vast under a microscope

 Look closer, you’ll see

 A star                         a spiral shell

translucent finger of quartz

white disc circled pink

a trefoil snapped from coral reef

ribbed column of bone       (from long-forgotten fish?)

oval of black gemstone      (a man’s thumb-print)

zany purple shard

puckered orange ball                     & all

the shimmering spheres of silica

 Today, your mould carves a mountain

in miniature (at least from where you’re sat)

but peer inside, you’ll find

the finite dust of life

smoothed & jostled by the sea

but not made uniform

never made into the same

a particle pick & mix

a glittering box of tricks

flakes of feldspar

& mica split &

cut from the

old lost

beloved

islands

Everything that’s ever lived

or been carved into form

            is somewhere still

ancient shipwreck dug from the black seas

beating wings of dragonflies

cartilage clotted in the ear of a Yukon Horse

coral reefs lost in heat waves   bleached

the mountains ground to dusk by glaciers

We can’t know what we’ve found

our hands are always sheathed

in gloves deadening

senseless

plastic

but know that each grain has been touched

& passed through the body of the earth

twice (or more)

ran over by the weight & pull of sea

landed now with you to

cycle onwards

rise & fall

forwards

sink & fly

outwards

without limit

to the ends of the earth

& round again

following its own path

carrying its own message

The handprints we’re leaving on the earth

will wash up soon

on other shores       in time zones strange

traversing                 transecting                                                  

meeting underground         or in the heart of rock

the way the sea’s junk yard returns

in a month / in an aeon

the bottle on the shore

the microspherules 

nurdling into sand

polystyrene

a siren sung by

zooplankton

eternally

showing up in liver scans

in the blood of whales

in the shimmering skin of

salmon

O! to be a mountain

raised by a child

then washed away

to be so willingly erased (scraped out)

            eroded (gnawed or ate away)

to make yourself never newly-new again after

a sea-change

makes you strange

on future

unseen

shores