Tide Pool

A stone was in my path, flecked with sea gold, with wave-rounded corners, with unexplainable smooth holes channelling through the heart of it, speckled with tiny black and purple living shells. It was that which I stopped to examine, squatting on my heels 'till the shadow of the rock lengthened to the edge of the waves, trying to puzzle out a meaning in the movement of the tiny purple-legged crabs living in the lee of the rock, in the waving slow tentacles of the fleshy thing in the deep part of the pool: waving, still, waving, still anemone, anemone anemone, Laughing at the lazy clown-faced fish hovering in the midst of the fleshy arms like some kind of sex, 'till the shadows vanished in a general darkness, and I stayed there still, listening to the sea which had come up to the pool and the rock, once and gone back again while I lingered. And while I waited there an odd man in overalls came by with a bucket and shone a strange dim light (purple!) past my back and the pool and the rock exploded in cold neon fire, purple, intense blue-white and cold, cold neon orange, a dozen times more moving things than I had ever noticed all day in the sun. The man moved on with his light, I saw him place some slowly-kicking glowing thing into that bucket of darkness and finally I rose and wandered home.