Sand speaks on this boiling day in August

Do you see us as individuals,
or a collective
as you finger-rake our dry whiteness
in search of treasures,
hot your toes to the sea?

What about colour, sameness,
and what of touch: fine, silken,
claggy, extra-coarse.

Consider us under the microscope: honeycomb,
pockmarked, smooth-bashed, glassy.
We’ve been here for eons.

You pile us on each other, dig holes in us,
see the world in a grain of sand.

For the record, we consider you a collective.