Sea foam at Gemstone Beach

Yellow sea foam is emerging from the ocean, wave
upon wave of jelly-creatures slithering from salt
to shore. Here it comes, a species long cradled in the deep,
shedding fathoms, shedding sea-water, not yet limbed for land.

Spongy-looking, lung-like. On they come. Quivering,
shuddering, sucking at gravity, light, the searing wind.
Never has there been such pain. Excruciating. Addictive.
They must! They must! They will! They will!

They scud, they skate, and each metre more onto the beach
is another bone cell imagining itself out of jelly. Is this joy?
It is joy! Shake, shake! Jelly-creatures conquer the world!
Until the sandbank, its small wall studded with gemstones.

Quartz, topaz, amethyst. Earth-kilned, earth-polished,
each is reversing out of land. Not so as you’d notice, but
plop, plop, eon by eon, they are falling back to the beach.
Still the yellow sea foam comes, and piles in a wobble

at the barrier, puzzling at solidity. Concentrate! Concentrate!
Wings? Wings!  The first shreds fly up and over.