Agate Hunting

We walk the dark of the beach
for firm footing,
below the tufted frosting of dry sand,
but above the tease of waves
wasting to thin foam and falling back
down the shore slope;
we walk where the water has lately come,
has bonded and burnished the sand
till our steps hardly dent it,
and our eyes must tighten
to drill through the steel sheets of light.

We stride against the wind
leaning, stooping for the odd lump
studding the sand sheen.
Time and time again
it is wet basalt
or a granite pebble
with quartz enough to glisten
from its half-shell of scooped sand.
It is not agate.

We know this is not the time.
After a winter storm
turns the sand,
or at least after a higher tide
than this receding --
that is the time to hunt.

Nor is this the place:
ten miles north, or two coves south
where weather slices down
cuts of old Pleistocene beach
from the bank;
stretches marked 'agate beach'
on the auto club map;
in such places the chances are better
for finding stone so pressed
that it accepts the light.

But we are not further up
or further down.
Salt wind dries the sand
from our fingertips
and, a steady five paces ahead,
dark beach rises to light.

.............................. R. S. Carlson

First published in Studia Mystica 4.2 (Summer 1981):9.

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