A single drop of rain 

splatters on dry sand. Not pure water,

but rain nonetheless. And more rain follows.

Wind whips droplets to urgent drumbeats.

The seashore pockmarks with tiny hollows.

Lightning cracks malevolent clouds

and the beach begins to drown in rain.

Hailstones pound islands of rock-strewn shore,

that still lie above water, miniature meteors

crunching the ground, while the wind rants 

wild garbled snatches. A random patchwork 

of pockets collects frozen marbles, 

like balls in roulette.

 

Clouds tear apart, revealing gashes

of ochre and mauve in the ash-heavy sky.

The orange background glow of methane

yields to a flash from an angry volcano,

muttering thickly inland. Hailstones flicker 

refracted colours, as they slowly melt into sand.

The tide retreats down the long, shelving beach

leaving pools where cyanobacteria thrive,

silently laying down lime-matted floors 

in stromatolite citadels, doors swinging wide open, 

balconies empty except for the odd sand grain,

corridors untrodden but for stray chlorophytes,

left high and dry.

 

The bickering storm rolls away 

across violet waves, seeking the west. 
In its wake, clumps of algae flex and extend,

tendrils stretching, reaching to absorb the fast waning light, 

fuelling new cells to clone themselves. 

In a tangerine haze, the weak sun, sucked down 

by the quicksand horizon, aborts. The beach returns to a peace

of sorts.

 

This is our Earth, before it was ours,

before the illusion of ownership evolved 

to invade stromatolite towers, before a profusion of eukaryotes 

stirred in the oceans.

 

There is light - but no eyes 

for light to enter. No seeing life, of any kind.

No witness.

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________

 

Philip Rösel Baker is an English poet of mixed European heritage. He lives in a converted barn in a remote hamlet in East Anglia, where the horizons are wide and the night skies dark. In 2022, two of his poems were longlisted for the International Erbacce Prize, and another won the George Crabbe Poetry Award. His poems have been published in various magazines and anthologies, most recently in On a Knife Edge, a climate change collection published by Suffolk Poetry Society and the Lettering Arts Trust. Contactable on philbaker@icloud.com.