Silver Life

Irish Times

14-05-2025

I walked a long line down the footpath,
Keeping my step just off the snow
creeping inwards towards the road.
The frost snaps and chill seeps, yet
there, in the snow, white,
silver-life lives.
In the rough, pale lumps,
Pure, clear crystals form.
They spread on the ground
And fall from the air;
snowflakes, frozen and whirling.
They split and mirror,
again and again,
floating down to those mounds of white.
White and plump like the pearls
that wash in from the ocean,
Rolling and growing,
and growing like the waves that carry them,
folding in on themselves
over and over
before crashing.
But the froth and foam that frame the shore
bear the weight of those waves
across the grain of silver sand.
The water bleaches the rocks
and fills the beach with colour,
all colour,
White.
Rainbow-white, like the opals
low and buried beneath
strata after strata
of earth, and stone, and fossil.
The ground itself is alive with silver life,
layers upon layers
of skeletons and shells
digging deep and down,
to start again the cycle.
Though there is no point to start from,
not anymore,
it never ends.
It shifts and sways like the
jellyfish, deeper and darker under.
They erupt from white polyps
to drift and float and flow,
and die and begin again
as grey, translucent blots.
They stain the sea as
the dust litters the land,
streaking the ground grey,
like the grey streaks the
white, marble stones.
Marble, metamorphic,
like the moth
that shreds its chrysalis and
sails the sky, searching,
looking for light.
lunar light,
rife with the image of life, reflected off a
pale, rocky surface.
The moon mirrors it down,
kneading the light into blobs of white
clouds, fluttering along the sky.
Clouds, that hurl those balls
of frozen rain towards the road,
falling on black tracks.
Footprints, in the snow.