Clouds and sun did battle in the sky yesterday, spring blue...

Clouds and sun did battle in the sky yesterday, spring blue versus heavy, sweeping, lowdown grey. On a beach on the North Shore, no wind blew, and low tide’s lapping waves licked the edge of shore. The sand called for attention, as it always does. Eyes scoured for good luck rocks, pretty shells, dead crabs, beach glass. The sky demanded it, too, the drama unfolding above, light dark cold warm rain shine. On the walk back, I found I’d drifted up to where beach met rising earth, a scramble of low brush and storm-scarred trees. There, eyes out not for shells or stones or crab limbs, but for driftwood, for branch fragments, smoothed and bleached and dedensified by salt water, friction, and wind. The carpentry work infiltrates and alters in unexpected ways. It used to be I’d come home from the beach with a pocketfull of shells. Now, wood. What luck to find a piece that looks like a rippled potato chip. They look like stones and bones, almost weightless in the palm.