Tidal Shelf Treasure Trove
A poem on the shelf's headstone reads:
swash zone tomes of stone
porous petric palimpsest
sedimental stories.
According to English professor Paul Harris, "the poem creates an extended metaphor comparing shore rocks, with their strata and holes, to layers of meaning in literary works. Textured stones are texts created by nature; we can read them as archives of the processes that formed them."
Jardin has made a list of things to hunt for in "Tidal Shelf." He says that "things are hidden here, like in a treasure hunt, but they're hidden in plain sight." In fact, Jardin added, "the whole Petriverse is full of wonders hidden in plain sight, and so is your garden, and our neighborhood, city, state, country, world, and universe."
Here is Jardin's list of treasures:
Two black birds; a tubby bird about to peck at two slender shells; two coral trees; a seaweed tree on two legs like a Tolkien Ent; a large beige egg and a smaller white one; two blue rocks shaped vaguely like tugboats; a small bay with a whale swimming in it; an oyster shell with a pearl-like eye; a seaweed tree leaning in a stiff wind.
How many of these can you find? What else do you see? Or imagine?
This page has paths:
- A Geo-ode Written in Stone Paul A. Harris
