Pebble and dash

Like the angel sounds of Sho pipes on the Silk Road,

Rays of light shone from the heavens - excursion day.

With gold-rush zeal we stamped headlong to the beach

on a quest for precious stones shaped from silica.

Sis wanted a pink rose quartz for her cabinet;

I looked in vain for waxy-grape chalcedony.

White chert is winter ice on gritty burning ground.

We raked through laminated schist and smooth-worn chert.

Dad said quartz crystal is a frosty-skinned beauty.

Mam asked, ‘What is beauty?’ Dad called her Socrates.

Mam wrenned out ‘We are all the stuff of common clay.’

‘We might all stop a hole to keep the wind away.’

Rolling two round pebbles, Dad crowed: ‘Hamlet’s balls!’

Waves banded like polished pebbles of sliced agate.

Suddenly a swallow skied in from the ocean,

Swooped blue-black gloss over the beach-gleam of pebbles

And flitted - a painter’s dark dash into primrose.

We sang our human souls like Hichiriki flutes.

We found our own raptures on stone-scraped tidal shores.