The Parrotfish Giveth

In the ocean
sand has many origins

Some worn from the great mountains —
rock turned to gravel to grains
pumped through braided veins
from the heart of continents

Some originate as magmatic phlegm
coughed red-hot into boiling sea
cooling, crashing, crumbling into
dark flecks — eventually

Some are the dead, sloughed —
clams, scallops, snails, emptied
of flesh and purpose — shells swept
and split into calcareous kernels

Still others begin as hardened coral crunched
at brunch by adamantine beaks of parrotfish —
pooping out gut-ground gorgeous white sand
without great ceremony or scene

“At Brunch” © Ben Young Landis