A Maritime Metaphor

The other day Marissa and I went for a walk on Chisler's Beach where we found a huge cache of shells that had washed up with high tide.  I'd never seen anything quite like this - a stretch of 50 meters or so littered with blue crabs, large clams and nautilus shells.  It was like a sessile convention - only more so because it was completely lifeless.  A local fisherman explained to me that this was probably the result of a recent Coast Guard raid on a fishing trawler; when the Coast Guard boards a vessel that lacks proper licensing, they confiscate the catch and apparently throw it overboard, resulting in this appalling waste.  Salvaging what we could, Marissa tried to make the best of it with an arrangement on our credenza and I did what I could with this poem - another example of the free associational (and deep metaphorical) opportunities provided by the flotsam and jetsam we encounter every day as we go about our business.

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By the law of the sea

Look what's come back to me

If not a maritime metaphor 

For the ego's foundational error
As compounded by growth
In this fine assortment 

Of Nautilus shells that

Spirals front to back

Arrayed by size 

In ascending order 

Each a center of the universe

An entirety unto itself