We comb the pebbles and rocks
Seeking
bright reds and oranges
anything shiny, glinting,
perfectly rounded blues,
shards of bright white.
We lean closer,
Poke through the tangled seaweed
Searching out
tightly coiled greens,
odd shapes
broken things.
Gifts of the sea.
Pearly fragments of iridescent shell
Catch my eye
I pick them up, examine them, return them.
They’re not for today’s catch of
Coca Cola cans
milk bottle tops
lolly sticks
discarded balls of fishing line
a left-foot jandal
a deflated balloon
shotgun wads
butts
hooks
and
disintegrating plastic bags.
The beach is swept clean
Until the next tide.
by Gillian Candler
The Volunteer
Empty trap
One weasel
Reset
One rat, snap, snap, empty trap
One hedgehog
Nibbled bait
Walking stick, lost and found
Next month
Another round
by Gillian Candler
The Bird Count
warm up
get ready
look out the window
one yellow hammer
in a flock of sparrows too many to count
step out
in the garden
two seagulls high in the sky
shadows of starlings and silver-eyes flying through
two resident blackbirds rustling under trees
one fantail flitting
one chaffinch perching
one tui coughing and chuckling
count me, count me
by Gillian Candler
Background:
I wrote the first draft of Beachcombers while taking part in the Lyme Regis Museum at Home project, it was inspired by the image of a fishing net. This final version includes some of the things I find while taking part in Litter Intelligence surveys at home in New Zealand. Read about the Litter Intelligence project in my blog post Counting Litter.
The Volunteer was inspired by a monthly trapping round checking pest traps. My trapping partner lost his walking stick and then found it again. Here's a blogpost about the trapping project.
The Bird Count was written back in 2014 while taking part in the Garden Bird Survey.
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