Thoughts by the sea

Laying on a towel on the beach, my hand shielding the sun, some grains of sand I lazily focus my eyes upon

Grains that lay piled in billions upon trillions on this shore that spans a mile

Oh why am I thinking this? As I turn over, sighing an inward smile….

… But this beach borders the vast sea like the smallest of hairlines 

Just a dot on the map, a drop in the huge oceans known to mankind  

Grains and grains of sand, on this stretching beach, with wave upon wave shimmering out to the distant horizon

I close my eyes as gulls glide past and cry … but these thoughts can’t be ignored

Is this enlightenment calling? Far away from the daily routines of my house

Where I obsess over all those manmade things and flit and generally fuss about

Where if I’m honest I like to think I’m in control

In the closed room where I watch my programmes, hear my music, and swipe and scroll in a digital world

The sort of world where some people say they sometimes get bored

But now I’m here by the sea, where nature doesn’t even have to try

Breath-taking hues of gold on grey

Mark the boundary where the clouds meet the sea and the end of this, just another day

The perfection of so subtly blended colours fills my gaze

Inspiring, enriching, enlivening in deeply profound ways

In its towering masterpiece across the canopy of the evening sky

I sense the coexisting smallest and staggeringly vast scales

In the rock pool looking down I see the cautious, mottled crab and darting see-through shrimps

The mysterious rock crevasse with dark shadows that hint

Of a lurking predator, a king of this trivial pool

Where a snack might be had of some unwary, wiggling fool

But then, looking up, my eyes slowly refocus and adjust to the far far horizon and a tiny white, billowing sail

And I ponder the steady lapping waves and the endless tides

The cycle of to-and-fro of ebb and flow, the wax and wane

throughout all mankind's existence it comes flowing again

In that never-ending cycle on our slowly, surely revolving planet Earth

The endless cycle of life. Death. And then rebirth

I’m mesmerised as my wet hand feels the rhythm of the sea’s surface by my side

The serenity of nature puts me effortlessly at ease, even though I’m alone

I know there’s something to all this that I can’t even grasp

A realization that some questions are too big to even ask

I feel I’m a part of this picture in its unfathomable beauty

And I’m drawn to the sea to somehow remind me who is me

I take another photograph and start the journey home