The Seashell

This was an assignment for school. We were supposed to write a poem, and then try to shorten It with the same message in only 6 lines. And then in only 3. So fun :)

Inside a small red box, beside where my grandfather lays

is the home of a nail shaped shell from his honored youth days

It was the heart of the smoke that was formed in the air

Whistled through it's chiseled opening where the wind hid scared

Almost impossible to apprehend, the shell kept it's shape

While the others where forcefully stomped on, causing them all to break

The blood and salt were stained to its core, but my grandfather picked it up

The only seashell left intact on the ocean floor

He told me it was an emblem, a memory of all the victory left inside

The affliction of an average shell that had washed up on the tide

But to my grandfather it was no ordinary find

It was the symbol of his story completely defined

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It is small; relative to the red box it lays in

And always beside the war veteran I call my grandfather

It was a seashell that symbolized his life as a youth

It symbolized the wind that spit blood in his face

It symbolized the thousands shells and lives that were destroyed

It was the only shell left on the beach that day, and it symbolized victory.

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It was salty and bloody,

and a perfect catastrophe,

But alas; the seashell survived