Will you look at that? *

A brief afternoon visit to the beach with a flask and some courgette cake. One of us swam, one of us ran about, and I scrambled around on the rocks.

 A fragile tissue of cobweb was strung across a cleft. I wondered what spider would choose such an unpropitious location. It was there, a tiny orange diadem spider. When it sensed I was trying to capture it (only photographically) the spider made a dash for a clump of dried-up thrift, scuttled up a stem and lay still, concealing itself in the desiccated flower head (see extra). How did it know it made a perfect match?

On the waterline, a recently-vacant crab shell. I turned it over and found... this glorious blue inside. The colour quickly fades but the poet Mark Doty noticed it too and wrote these lines (from a slightly longer poem). 

A gull’s
gobbled the center,

leaving this chamber
—size of a demitasse—
open to reveal

a shocking, Giotto blue.
Though it smells
of seaweed and ruin,

this little traveling case
comes with such lavish lining!
Imagine breathing

surrounded by
the brilliant rinse
of summer’s firmament.


* Instead of your phone (a follow-up to my previous blip.)