Daily Bulletin 31/01/22

 Today’s Covid figures for Greece 31/1/22

19.731 New cases

119 Deaths

576 Intubated

1620 New cases on Crete

Chania 465

Rethymnon 221

Heraklion 765

Lassithi 169

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A poem written by my mother who is currently showing the strength of her inner core as she fights to comeback after a stroke.

The Shell

It’s a brisk, cold day on Goring beach,

Where I search for solitude, solitude.

Time for myself.

Low.

Low tide.

Look out to sea and listen to the rhythm of the shore:

The wind sings in the ears,

And the seagulls cry a simple descant as they glide

And weave a lacy veil across the sun

So sharply glinting on the dancing waves.

Breathe deep the air, the damp and salty air,

Experience the symphony

Of moving water, seaweed, pebbles, sand.

Along the mark of the high tide

I walk amid the storm-tossed debris of the sea –

Fishing net and line and rope and string,

Shoes, sandals, plastic bottles, cans and drums

And skeletons of fish and birds

And stark white cuttlefish bone.

A mermaid’s purse, empty of its eggs of dogfish, ray or shark,

The young all hatched, long gone.

Empty whelk egg masses bounce and roll

And lightly dance before the lifting breeze.

A seagull feather points along the beach.

Walk on.

Find wood of satin smoothness, worn and grey

And pebbles: granite, slate and chalk and flint,

Storm-shifted rocks and boulders, shattered, split.

Fragments of long distant times, crumbled by the sea,

Then tumbled, tumbled, tumbled, tumbled

To pebbles and sand.

But here, a pebble with an imprint of a shell,

A life that was, a contact with the past.

Another pebble, holed right through

By gimlet action of a smaller stone

Empowered by the movement of the waves,

Inexorably pierced by stone or grit -

That in the living oyster makes a pearl.

Find countless shells

Of oysters, limpets, cockles, whelks and crabs,

A kind of treasure which the sea

Threw carelessly upon the shore.

I bend to look, take in my hand just one,

A common whelk,

Another skeleton, striking in its simple beauty.

Here was the pear-shaped swelling of its walls,

Here is the inner spiral core.

The shell had a shape, like the shape of a life

Built up through infancy and childhood, mind and learning;

The longings of the heart;

Duty;

And conscience, its decrees and its control.

The outer shell and living flesh

Had once coiled round the central pillar

And was dependent on its spiral strength.

Now, buffeted by wind and storms

And constant movement of the sea

The empty shell has crumbled, worn away.

Still is the central pillar strong.

Take in your hand this shell.

Look close and long,

And let your thoughts flow up the spiral road

To find again yourself, your inner core,

Your lasting strength.

Josephine Mary Connelly. 2005 (Edited) June 2014.