Tuesday Beach Report: Two Things

Cliffs made out of sand

Yesterday the beach was flat, thick with seaweed and flocks of wading birds, poking their beaks into the surf. Yesterday by the time I finished my walk, my feet were so black with beach tar, I looked like I was wearing shoes. Today the sand was scoured clean and big waves scooped the sand into towering cliffs. Not a speck of tar in sight. The natural world changes without any input from us.

The remains of a mermaid tail sculpted by some beachgoer.

It brings to mind this poem.

Ozymandias

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 - 1822

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”