Heavenly

It's my conceit that Poseidon is secretively engrossed.

Three dogs, three adults, and one toddler zigzag the low tide sand. Mid afternoon rolls, mysteriously, towards an early evening.

Often, he leaves this work to the Nereides. Their apprenticeship is much admired. In the mortar grinds: opal, cyanophyta, splinters of plundered sunken emeralds, thickset mother of pearl, a slick of saline, a tonne of whale's milk. No one watches him work today: revelation is a Master's art. He paints the silken sea; semiprecious, a silvery caul; it represents the presence of a deity. The sun leans from his slow chariot, trails golden fingers through the wet colours.

Everything is precious, being unrepeatable. If it were simply replicated, how would we know to value it?

Back from the beach, sand on my feet, sat under porch-light while Little Granddaughter sleeps in her car seat. It's not too cold and the coffee not too hot. I love: salt on the windscreen, earthy night smell, ghostly white of Dog wandering deep in shadow, peaceful sigh of sleeping child. One clear star above, in the darkening blue of sky. Ash tree stretches from its stout trunk out into branches into twigs into the night, seeps into the celestial ink.