I Walked the Beach One Stormy Morning

I walked the beach one stormy morning

Where white-foam fingers stole wet sand

From beneath my bare and salt-slick feet

And watched the waves like curling mirrors

Made of green and weathered glass

Gather up with white-crowned glory and smash

Onto the shore

I tasted salt on the restless wind

That played upon the fervent waters

And watched the loud white-breasted gulls ride upon its back

I left inch-deep footprints that the waves

Carried off the leave the perfect shore

As if I had never come; carried my passage to where ocean waters

Met the slate-gray sky

Those waters stored the footprints of

Years that walked my myopic life, wave-torn sand minutely marked

By the child that walked this very beach

There are others, now, who come out later

Who will watch their youth given to green-glass waves

And who will look back on a perfect beach

One stormy morning