On Shifting Sands – a meditation

As each tide recedes along the Victoria Tower Gardens’ foreshore, an island of pale yellow sand is left crowning a beach of multicoloured rubble stones.

A sliver of sand…

A golden sliver of sand framed by pebbles and mud,
with Nature’s ephemeral artwork briefly sculpted, etched, and swept clean by surging tides, giving for ever fresh canvas for shadows, footsteps, and myriad forms …

Clean sweep of an ebbing tide
Shadows and sand veins of retreating waves
Interwoven smudged lines left by the tide
Leaves and footprints across a ripple-sculpted sand
There and back, man and dog
Paw prints in rain-pocked sand
Two birds walked among leaves
A mess of footprints

Sea of sand with swirling waves, imprints of sudden changes, moulded by contrary currents, trapping for a while between its crests random objects and occasional artwork to be borne away by the next flood tide.

Advancing tide, flooding dried mud-caked sand waves
Mud encrusted sand ripples
Sand ripples marking a change in flow
Tide softened sand ripples
Water mirrored in the sand
Contrary currents
Leaf and dune shadows
Ensnared by dunes…
…Brick…
…Bone…
… and oyster shells.
Faces
Leaf shadows
Help!
Love
Mudlarkers pacing the foreshore

Tabula rasa every tide…