What Closes

The anemone closes when you touch it. Everyone knows this. Children learn it on their first trip to the coast, kneeling on wet rock with their fingers out, amazed that something so soft can decide so quickly. What they don't tell you is it opens again. Slowly. You have to wait. Most people don't. I've spent more hours than I should admit watching a single pool no wider than a dinner plate. The water clears after the wave retreats. A crab the size of my thumbnail moves sideways over a limpet, and a blenny — brown, overlooked — holds its position against the surge with a stubbornness I recognize. There are seventeen species in this pool. I counted. A marine biologist would probably correct me — she'd split something I'm calling one thing into two, or notice what I missed between the coralline algae and the barnacle fringe. Fine. Seventeen is what I've got. The tide comes back in its own time. The anemone knows before I do. It opens its tentacles wider, the whole flower of it softening into the incoming water, feeding on whatever the sea brings. I've learned three things from rock pools. First: patience has a physical shape — it looks like a man on his knees getting his trousers wet. Second: the interesting things happen after you stop looking for them. Third: I don't actually know a third thing. Two is enough. The pool doesn't need a lesson. It is already working without my understanding. The wave comes. The water rises. I stand up and my knees crack and the crab doesn't care.