by Mary Oliver
Once I looked inside
the darkness
of a shell folded like a pastry,
and there was a fancy face--
or almost a face--
it turned away
and frisked up its brawny forearms
so quickly
against the light
and my looking in
I scarcely had time to see it,
gleaming
under the pure white roof
of old calcium.
When I set it down, it hurried
along the tideline
of the sea,
which was slashing along as usual,
shouting and hissing
toward the future,
turning its back
with every tide on the past,
leaving the shore littered
every morning
with more ornaments of death--
what a pearly rubble
from which to choose a house
like a white flower--
and what a rebellion
to leap into it
and hold on,
connecting everything,
the past to the future--
which is of course the miracle--
which is the only argument there is
against the sea.
from Devotions: the Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
Penguin, 2017 
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