She sweeps the heavy sand away with grave
concern for where my body, like a shell,
has washed ashore. Her cadence is the wave
which breaks the breakers’ crashing, rhythmic spell.
There’s time, she says, as plenty as the sand.
She stretches out beside me to embrace
perspective. This was not what I had planned
in stepping from the cliffs of quiet grace.
I fell forever, more alone than wood
which drifts from empty cove to barren beach.
The tide received my soul; it understood
that time had ebbed beyond my farthest reach.
Yet time, it seems, can flood from time to time,
and flotsam may be held, by some, sublime.