Today I strolled upon the shore
Where Grandad walked in days of yore;
Along its sandy, glossy sheen
Where once his imprint would have been.

And thereupon I did behold
‘Twas here, when I was two years old
I dangled from his sturdy hands
In gleeful awe of foaming sands.

So timeless now, this scene appears
It’s altered not these fifty years
Nor hundreds….thousands gone before
As restless wave greets silent shore.

Still endless rolling surf she brings
Now to my little son she sings.
I held him in her gentle lee,
The way my Grandad once held me.

As every wavelet’s dying throes
Washed tiny grains between my toes
I thought perhaps that in his day
For every grain, a pebble lay.

Eroded now by sea and rock
And pendulum of tidal clock,
Its pulsing rhythm, all abounding
In softest kiss, or anger pounding.

I pondered what it all may mean;
Our ocean’s mighty time machine.
Where pebbles, hardened flat or round,
By rolling surf to sand are ground.

From rock to stone to pebbled grain
To sand, and back to rock again…
As, in our turn, we surely must
Become as ashes… dust to dust.

© 2006 Rod Walford

 

Rod Walford is an Englishman living in Auckland, New Zealand and has been writing poetry for some 25 years.
He is a semi-retired diesel fuel injection engineer. He has self-published several books of rhyming poetry including “Timeless,” “Real Poetry for Real Women (written by a man),” and “One Hour before the Dawn.” Access his website here: www.rodwalfordpoetry.com

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6 Responses

  1. Sally Cook

    Dear Mr. Walford —

    So good to see one more poet coming from an entirely different discipline who still feels compelled to write in a traditional way.

    Welcome, and hanks for that! I will go to your site and read more.

    Reply
  3. C.B. Anderson

    Rod,
    Your poem was numinous, and any criticisms I might bring to bear are slight, so please keep echoing the Universal Authentic. You have ground out, in your engineering way, a glass lens that magnifies the procession of generations. Without such efforts, civilization, culture and the idea of eternal progress shall cease to exist.

    Reply
    • Rod Walford

      Thank you C.B. for your deeply insightful and much appreciated thoughts.
      I shall strive to comply. Kind regards
      – Rod

      Reply

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