Finding ancient seashells, by Yvonne Aburrow
Finding ancient seashells
on chalk grassland,
brittle as old bones,
the tides of our blood
remember the sea that covered
this land long ago.
Tiny white whorls, houses once
for creatures of the sea floor
where motes of decaying matter
drifted down from above -
memories falling from the light
into the depths of the ocean.
These falling fragments
ossified into rock, pressed
by their own weight.
Grass whispers now on the crumbling rock
and the shells tumble among the roots of plants
in the dry brown earth that smells of bones.