Find a sea shell on the shore; <br />hold it in your calloused hand; <br />hear the surging roar on roar, <br />hear the crumbling of the land; <br />see the silent suck and slow <br />insistent pawing clay and rock, <br />dark tidal murmurings below <br />each superficial wreck and shock. <br />Then pull the nail from hulk of wood <br />black beneath the coble's rust; <br />drive that nail into the shell, <br />watch phoenix-like from osseous dust <br />the red rose grow and bud and bloom, <br />let fall its fruit upon the sand. <br />Split it open. Find a shell, <br />and hold it in your calloused hand.<br /><br />Robin Skelton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-shell/
