On Shifting Sand - Aug 27 2020

On Shifting Sand

Aug 27 2020

When we returned after the storm

the beach had disappeared.

Scoured down to bedrock

by wind and wave,

granite glistening pink and grey

in the unaccustomed light.

Leaving in its place

blow-downs and driftwood

and badly weathered leaves,

pools of standing water

cut off from the sea.

There was seaweed, plastered to rocks

shrivelling in the sun,

ribbons of kelp

dredged from the deeps

dead fish stinking of rot.

But sands always shift,

deposited further down the shore

by invisible currents

and moonlit tides.

Carved

by run-off streams

as water seeks its lowest point,

branching and bending

and channelling through the silt.

And wind,

stirring the beach

into sandstorms and vortices,

whipping up dunes

that will, over time

march to leeward before it.

When we returned after the storm

we realized

we'd also been living on shifting sands

we'd mistaken, somehow

for solid rock.

We'd always known nature

was indifferent to our lives

but imagined we were clever enough.

Then, watching over us, there were our gods,

along with the wellsprings of hope

that are eternal

until they're not.

But the shore was still there,

waves breaking

and salty air

stinging our eyes.

And somewhere, a new beach has formed

which surely we shall find.

Hot sand, curling between our toes.

A soft place

to rest our weary bones.

The poem whipsaws from despair to hope. When I wrote ...the wellsprings of hope / that are eternal / until they're not, I was thinking of the bedrock hope that even in the black depths of despair somehow keeps us going ...until even that foundational hope is exhausted, which is when the rapid decline begins and the inevitable end is near. I think this is what suicidal depression must feel like.

But in the poem, the survivors resurrect hope, rescuing themselves by imagining a better future. Because we are, by nature, filled with hope. Perhaps unreasonable hope. Perhaps hope that denies reality and rests on illusion. But hope that leads us to rebuild houses on floodplains, persist in tornado alley, and reconstruct in the wake of hurricanes.

Because the beach has always been there, a permanent feature. Forgetting the lessons of the past. Forgetting that sand, by nature, never lasts. And forgetting that we have built our lives on shifting sands: the shifting sands of luck, contingency, and the accident of birth; the shifting sands of our own hubris and delusion. A word that could just as well go unsaid, because there is no other kind of sand than shifting.

The idea for this poem came very simply. After reading about the latest hurricane to hit the gulf coast, I was scrolling through some pages of something or other and the words “Sand Dunes Park” (or something close!) caught my eye. I'd also recently listened to a podcast on the origin of beaches: the different kinds of sand, and how it gets there. Whatever alchemy it is that creates inspiration, this poem immediately started to form in my head. Not where it would go – that's almost always a mystery, even to me – but at least where it would start.

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I have no idea whether granite would be found under a typical sand beach. Or even bedrock of any sort. Probably more likely sandstone. But I like the hardness and permanence implied by both bedrock and granite. And I like glistening pink: like a newborn, blinking in the unaccustomed light.

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Actually, instead of being a cause of erosion, it's run-off streams that replenish most of the sand on mineral sand beaches; not, as I previously thought, sand deposited by the ocean.

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I was tempted to use “dust devils” instead of vortices: the more visceral and evocative term almost always wins out over the more technical and fussy one. But vortices had a nice resonance with beach. And “dust devil” elicits a kind of cognitive dissonance: wasn't this supposed to be about sand, not dust?

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In the final stanza, in the line which surely we shall find, I was reluctant to use shall: not only does it sound somewhat archaic, it's one of those very “poetical” words I try hard to avoid – ones we only hear in poetry, and almost never in everyday speech. But I really like the subjunctive form here. It evokes a less certain future than “will”, and therefore reinforces the sense of unreasonable hopefulness.