Have you visited a shoreline
where a pebble caught your eye?
Have you slowed down to absorb
its colours – patterns – shape?
How it fits your hand so cold and smooth,
dead weight of stone that’s eons old.

Maybe wet, it’s a shining jewel
then dries, disappointingly dull,
returning to its sun-dried state.
Have you wondered perhaps
how its separate life began,
through countless years of brutal frost and sun.

From bedrock then, to pebble now,
broke off by earthquakes
or spewed out from earth’s core,
then smoothed in countless rapids.
A trillion separate secret stories,
at our feet beside the wearing sea.

From its hiding near the water,
One sits proudly on my shrine,
to help me ground my earth connection.
And while this pebble seems inactive,
it’s alive within ‘deep time’;
A concept hard to truly innerstand.

Is there a metaphor for us
in how such stones arrive like this?
Split off from universal source,
bruised and battered through their life;
worn smooth by time and endless tides,
to a beauty, each connected yet unique.

But just remember this:
there is one telling truth here:
that our lives are but a blink,
while that pebble’s just begun
Its long journey to become
ground down to a tiny grain of sand!