Cool crescent of proportional perfection, the nautilus shell gleams in a slash of sunlight.
A lustrous comma contradiction of itself, its form pale punctuation.
I palm the sensuous pearly curve, wondering from which languid reef it came.
I sense the sacred geometry, the swirl of luminosity deep within, the hypnotic tumble into slippery darkening shadow.
There is a flawless symmetry in these nacred walls, these ordered wavelets of calcified ooze from long forgotten mantle tissues.
I cup the slim shell to my ear - the sea-sound is a muted hush.
No thing resides within its burnished cavernosities.
I stroke the stiff ridges of past lives, the vacant tidal chambers of translucent armour, protecting naught.
