Sand

 

Sand is old.

Thousands of years old.

The pulverized remains

of rocks and coral,

eroded by the tidal waves and time,

over the course of thousands of years.

Yet it has no memory.

 

Greek warriors,

Roman Senators,

Persian Kings,

may have stridden upon the

very rocks and stones that make

the sands we lay our beach blankets on.

It's memory, underfoot.

 

Sand gets everywhere.

In the crevices and cracks

of our bodies, our clothes,

our lives.

Small grains, individually unnoticed,

wash up along the beaches and shores

of our memories. We find it everywhere.

 

Mountains of sand,

piled in wild clumps,

dunes of remembrances,

of victories and of losses.

Memories of faces lost,

to the whims of life’s sandstorms

and unpleasant whirls of the wind.  

 

Sand slipping silently

through clenched fingers,

as memories escape,

the times spent together,

the angry,

the happy,

the silent.

 

Sand, so roughly hewed

over millennia, deposited

in our very laps, only to

be pulled away, back to the

raging seas from whence

it came. Yet we’re left with the particulate.

  

The small grains of sand,

in our shoes,

between our toes, under our nails,

so embedded that it never

seems to shake.

Like tiny shards of our memory,

stuck to our minds, forever.

 

Gone, but never gone.

Replenished.

Depleted.

Remade.

Found.

Lost.

Us.