Found while walking

It's possible to determine the seasons here

by what is washing up on the beach.  The tides

bring oyster shells in early summer,

multitudes of itty bitty crabs

and the particular seaweed that prints red on cloth.

Driftwood is plentiful

bleaching & cracking like rough skin in the sunshine.

It's heaven for the dogs.  Quinn is exuberant over her stick-chasing swims

while Isla is content to quietly sniff every log

up and down the shoreline for as long and as far as you'll let her.

Simple pleasures

enjoyed while I beach comb.

A lovely poem flew into my mailbox this morning from American Life in Poetry.

Although referencing the other coast, there's a truth here

to be found on all of them ... and within all of us.

I thought you might enjoy it.

Strewn 

It’d been a long winter, rags of snow hanging on; then, at the end

of April, an icy nor’easter, powerful as a hurricane. But now 

I’ve landed on the coast of Maine, visiting a friend who lives

two blocks from the ocean, and I can’t believe my luck, 

out this mild morning, race-walking along the strand. 

Every dog within fifty miles is off-leash, running 

for the sheer dopey joy of it. No one’s in the water,

but walkers and shellers leave their tracks on the hardpack. 

The flat sand shines as if varnished in a painting. Underfoot, 

strewn, are broken bits and pieces, deep indigo mussels, whorls

of whelk, chips of purple and white wampum, hinges of quahog, 

fragments of sand dollars. Nothing whole, everything 

broken, washed up here, stranded. The light pours down, a rinse 

of lemon on a cold plate. All of us, broken, some way 

or other. All of us dazzling in the brilliant slanting light.

~ by Barbara Crooker

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photo processing notes:

images shot with iPhone

double exposure created with Diana Photo app

edited on an iPad with Snapseed & Stackables apps

copyright added online with PicMonkey

: : :

... and if you've ever dreamed about walking the entire coastline of the UK

have a peek over on Ruth's Coastal Walk blog.

She's just been to Rhossili Beach

and you will not believe the unspoiled beauty ....