Sea Pebbles

Unknown

Sea Pebbles

My love, how time makes hardness shine.

They come in every color, pure or mixed

gray-green of basalt, blood-soaked jasper, quartz,

granite and feldspar, even bits of glass,

smoothed by the patient jeweller of the tides.

Volcano-born, earthquake-quarried,

shaven by glaciers, wind-carved, heat-cracked,

stratified, speckled, bright in the wet surf—

no two alike, all torn from the dry land

tossed up in millions on this empty shore.

How small death seems among the rocks. It drifts

light as a splintered bone the tide uncovers.

It glints among the shattered oyster shells,

gutted by gulls, bleached by salt and sun—

the broken crockery of living things.

Cormorants glide across the quiet bay.

A falcon watches from the ridge, indifferent

to the burdens I have carried here.

No point in walking farther, so I sit,

hollow as driftwood, dead as any stone.

Dana Gioia

"How small death seems among the rocks. It drifts/light as a splintered bone the tide uncovers." A beautiful but chilling line. The description of the stones, too, "blood-soaked jasper", "volcano-born, earthquake-quarried, shaven by glaciers, wind-carved..torn..tossed up..." is one of violence. There on the beach before him, the speaker sees a panoply of violence and death. And yet, there is something else, too. "The patient jeweller of the tides", who works the broken glass bits into sea- glowing gems, the forgotten, broken discards made mysteriously new/old, once common buttons or bits now uncommon, rare. The strangeness of shells, which, though nothing but remains, skeletons of once living molluscs, become something like pieces of art; sculpted minute monuments to the lives they once housed. This is how Time and the ocean work upon life and death. Curiously, with rhythmic alchemy, so that what was once merely a multitudinous brokenness, becomes a  treasure, a sign of hope. The speaker, though, sits among all this like a shell of himself, indifferent, unresponsive. Is there hope that Time and the patient jeweller will do their work on him as well? If stones can be made to shine, can broken humans be made something new?