One day in early autumn 2017, whilst investigating rock-pools near the slipway at Bordeaux, it occurred to me that these small reservoirs of trapped sea-water may be an apt metaphor for the human soul.
Created by tide, they exist only till tide’s return, when their isolation is ended and each is reabsorbed into the great ocean.
ROCK-POOLS
The tide advances then retreats:
retreating, it leaves rock-pools full
of teeming sea-life, micro-worlds,
like widely scattered ocean-seeds.
Our lives take place within such spheres,
small rock-pool lives, crabbed histories.
That interval between the tides
is space for birth, existence, death,
played out, in time, as life must be
within each germinating seed,
a constant cycle, vibrant, brief,
with latitude for grief and joy.
Swift, then, the sure-returning wave,
that tireless harvester of souls,
reclaims the tide-crop that it sowed.
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