On Sand

All hardware.
All software.
All shoreline.
All desert.

Our symbol for eternity.
Comfort beneath our steps.

Castles are made.
Chips are perfected.
Timers are reset.
Eggs are cooked.

We measure time with it.
Then lose track of time
looking through what it became.

Glass.
Screens.
Fibre.
Silicon.

We took something
that could not remember

and taught it memory.

Taught it numbers.
Taught it language.
Taught it images.

Eventually,
we taught sand
to think.

Something we still shake from our shoes.

The desert became a processor.
The shoreline became intelligence.

Grain by grain,
we refined the ordinary
until it could calculate
the extra-ordinary.

Perhaps that is the elegance of sand.

It asks for nothing.

Carries oceans.
Measures centuries.
Builds cities.
Runs machines.

And now, somehow,
answers back.

The future, it turns out,
was not made from something new.

We found it
beneath our feet.

J.T.