A Tiny Teal Trinket: A Poem on Change | Thursday Verse No. 23

   Some objects seem to arrive in our lives already carrying a history we cannot fully know. Their value lies not in rarity, but in the invisible passage of hands, seasons, distances, and small survivals etched into them. 

  A Tiny Teal Trinket is a poem about a forgotten object quietly existing through time. 

You are the Moon

Photograph by Bagriant on Pexels.

A broken piece of glass

into the sea was tossed,

ending up in a rocky shoal,

among thousands of obsolete excesses of whole.

For a decade and more,

It oscillated between the offing and the shore.

Some days sparkling the smile of the sun,

Other days sinking to the depth of the ocean.

Some days it bruised a trodling toe,

And was thrown back to the ocean floor,

Other days it was spluttered ashore, 

And by the rocks and sand thoroughly scoured. 

But all along it lost 

specks of itself to every volatile toss. 

Many years beyond the grasp of time, 

A little child trodled along with a smile, 

Splashing the teal blue ocean 

Into the shape of its iridescent imagination. 

Taking a fistful of water and sand,

The child dreamt of holding a frozen droplet in the grip of its hand.

But magic evaded the physics of nature,

And the child happily hopped down the trajectory of its adventure.

Until a splosh of wave delivered at its footing,

a tiny teal little thing—

a frosty glass pebble,

Like the ocean distilled in a bubble. 

Marveled by its sight,

the child held it tight,

Carrying it home to the little drawer,

Holding marbles, buttons, stamps, shells, springs,

and a tarnished bronze ring.

- Mercy Rebonica