Little Heaven
Little Heaven
Special times and places link themselves together
within my memory like a string of precious pearls.
Why so? Why this or that and not another?
Yet they persist and wear the passing years.
How easily I see that childhood day I picnicked
with my aunty by the sea; an isolated place with azure sky
above, and quietness enveloping, except for sudden splash
and airborne jewelled foam with bright-eyed gull aquiver.
Side by side we walk again along a beach all strewn with shells.
Most are gleaming sapphire-blue, others grey striated, boring.
Ah, my aunty says, Behold the abalones of Little Heaven.
She places one upon my outstretched hands. I call them
Ear Shells. See their shape?’ Yes, Aunty Clara, yes!
I turn the dull shell over. Then, wide-eyed, meet transformation.
The thick and inner side is iridescent, glowing like an opal!
Take it home, only one. Save it as your timeless treasure.
Then we sit on silvery sand, wavelets rippling near our feet,
enjoying Little Heaven, knowing joy in fullness. We did not know
nor even guess that, far off in the future years, hooded thieves
would covet, plunder, crush, destroy and leave a barren beach.
Yet still in memory the sun beams down on aunt and child
who share a chocolate bar to celebrate the awesome beauty of creation
and of kinship, foretaste of bliss to come in higher realm.
New Zealand born Mary Trim, who writes as Marye Trim, has a PhD in English Literature (Loughborough, UK, 1998) and studied journalism at the University of Queensland, Australia. She has authored five published books and hundreds of inspirational articles, stories and poems and was a newspaper columnist for nine years, while also working as missionary teacher in India and Thailand. She feels called to writing ministry and sees herself as akin to those “Out of Zebulon, they who handle the pen of the writer” (Judges 5:14).
Photo by Osman Rana on Unsplash
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