Diana Webb

Pocketing the Tide

towards the sea
silver surfaces of leaves –
his hair in wisps

Picked from the shingle ridge, I hold in my palm a smooth white heart-shaped stone, a poem paperweight. Sat by the windbreak wall, he tries to munch on one with his two tiny front milk teeth.

the swish, swish, swish
of all the little waves –
first syllables

From a couple of miles along the shore, on the far side of the river's mouth, my earliest memory returns; the beach hut around which I plodded endlessly long gone to driftwood, a shimmer ribs the surface pearl and plain.

again
and again
each pebble