I have always liked pebbles, even under my bare feet when I go down to swim. Perhaps it is because, I learnt to swim on a shingle beach in Devon. Today I still like the smooth, sea-moulded touch of pebbles like these on the beach at St Leonards. Each has its own story, and they rub together like old friends.The man who I keep seeing at his computer in a neighbouring window, this morning is taking a sip from a mug. While he surveys the screen (just as I wonder what people are reading I wonder what they are writing) I sense his thirst being quenched, but his pursuit of words, ideas, thoughts, answers, seems to continue.
All that is left of a poem that I have been working on is in my notebook:
... easy to give up and drown
in the sea of received opinion,
lulled by the singing of whales
and the benevolence of dolphins...
2 comments:
Lovely post today, Plutarch.
I especially like the line, "Each has its own story, and they rub together like old friends," from the paragraph about the pebbles. I embarrass my daughter and grandson, sometimes, when I pick up pebbles along the street or from the landscaping of businesses we visit. I've found some geological treasures that way.
The remains of your poem, fragment that it might be, contains wisdom and compassion, a kindness, I recently discovered is somewhat missing in my makeup - not completely, but I haven't as much as I once thought I did. Good poetry touches the readers, as this piece of your does.
I,too,attach importance to kindness and try, not always succesfuly, to practice it. One of my favourite poems is Wordsworth's Lines on revisiting Tintern Abbey, refers to "...that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless,unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love..."
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