Pennine view

Town - shopping
Home - made tapenade and supper, scrubbed garden bench of green stuff ready for oiling
Quick cycle
Took supper to friends

I’ve been discussing shells with ceridwen who has identified one that I saw in profusion in Norfolk and which I don’t think I’d seen there before, certainly not in such numbers. It had reminded me of a poem I knew I’d posted before and it has been nagging me since I saw the shell. I’ve just found it ...

The Hermit Crab (by Mary Oliver)

Once I looked inside
the darkness
of a shell folded like a pastry,
and there was a fancy face -

or almost a face -
it turned away
and frisked up its brawny forearms
so quickly

against the light
and my looking in
I scarcely had time to see it,
gleaming

under the pure white roof
of old calcium.
When I sent it down, it hurried
along the tideline

of the sea,
which was slashing along as usual,
shouting and hissing
toward the future,

turning its back
with every tide on the past,
leaving the shore littered
every morning

with more ornaments of death -
what a pearly rubble
from which to choose a house
like a white flower -

and what a rebellion
to leap into it
and hold on,
connecting everything,

the past to the future -
which is of course the miracle -
which is the only argument there is
against the sea.