The Pencil

In the wrack at the tideline

the jet and flot, shoes,

lighters, weed and wood,

bottles, birds, bags -

an alphabet of choice

and possibility, a line of

lives, chances,

held in the tide’s diurnal breath,

cast up, thrown away, small

in the process of dis and

resolution. And underneath

the kelp, this pencil.

I pick it up, and time begins again.