After Walking Clam Beach

“I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” 

                                                             — Isaac Newton

Beachcombing

for Terry

First a scallop shell for holding

in your pocket, what lived in its

mineral shine, a tongue without words.

You finger its stories. I oozed. I was a dab

of muscle, a heart with a hundred eyes,

artist, alchemist, pilot of tides. Can you

leave this? Shoes filling with sand,

you set your feet free. Now salt water,

amber foam, part of a pier with rusted nails,

a surf scoter washed with kelp, her eye paring

sky to a pale blue point. It’s time for you

to start leaning into the sea. I snap photos,

digital images, mix of math and memory.

Ahead of me, framed in spray and the jut

of Trinidad Head, you become simply

the shape of a man.

Terry Schulz at Clam Beach,  photo: kps