I sit on a rocky promontory,

Gazing over the waters of the sea.

Waves splash below me, sending a spray of water

From a sea, ill-tempered and intemperate.

Somewhere in the distance, a boat has passed

And the waves have reached the shore,

The waters angered by the disturbance.

The water reaches across the rocks

Forming pools in crevices created at an earlier time;

Eroding a little more stone to become

The sand of some far off beach.

In an endless rhythm, the waves strive

For the beach and are mercilessly drawn back.

A twig is caught in the ebb and flow

Never certain when it will get thrown

Too far up the sands or finally drawn

Into deeper waters to voyage somewhere else.

Caught in pools, between the larger rocks,

A microcosm has formed of predator and prey,

A world of colour and beauty, life and death.

The flowery anemone, waving in the eddies,

Await their prey with numbing venom.

A small crab picks through the sand,

Scavenging for carrion from other meals past,

Crawling aside to move around a sea star.

Urchins, moving ever so slowly across the rocks,

Their spiny coverings a defence against attack.

Small fish, trapped with the last tide,

Eating plant and animal, their escape

Hours away, at the mercy of the moon.

Vertebrate and invertebrate, together,

Calling this home; for now or forever.

The sea is the beginning

And, ultimately, the end.