A castle built from the surrounding sand
Upon a beach where tides forever ebb and flow
Sometimes the plot is dry, sometimes beneath the sea
The material a careful fusing of sand and water
To make that stable mix that moulds
The walls, the keep, turrets, doorways and windows
And ramparts pierced with crenulations
A moat is scooped and a flag placed upon the tallest tower
The castle is complete
To last for all too short a time
Its fate obliteration by the coming tide
Components dissolved again to sand
With no trace of the edifice that stood before
Each grain now reunited with the golden mass around
Perhaps the castle is a metaphor for human life
Whereby not sand but human cells
Grow and mature to form each living soul
That lives until the coming tide of death
That quenches out each human life on earth
When our atoms like the castle’s sand
Can never be destroyed
But redistributed to be reformed into another soul
To last until the next incoming tide
Ad infinitum