Stones on Fallduff Strand

I wrote this poem during a wonderful holiday in 2015 when we stayed very close to this beach near Louisburgh, County Mayo in the West of Ireland. I was amazed by the different shapes and colours of the rocks on the beach there and began to think about their origin.

Stones on Fallduff Strand

Patterns, irregular and round,
strata, curves, deposits.
Boulders banked abound,
formations, molten now solid.
Strewn across the strand,
sediments under pressure.
Heat within Earth's crust,
magma, mantle, ridges,
gravels, sands and hotspots
brought structure to this place,
interesting, varied, diverse,
a multitude of shapes and colours,
as in the human race.

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