Anonyme
The sea pulls back to show what it has kept,
dark stones and tangled weed and broken shells,
the bones of things that once moved and slept
below the surface where no light compels.
I walked out on the sand at six this morning,
my boots sinking into the wet and grey,
the whole horizon carrying its warning
that something shifts when night gives way to day.
There was a boat out there, too far to name,
it held its course and did not look my way.
I watched until the mist had swallowed it the same
as mist swallows everything that cannot stay.
What is it we come looking for at shorelines?
The cold, the scale, the sense of being small?
Or just the proof that something still defines
itself against the tide and does not fall?
I left no trace — the water came back in
and pressed the sand smooth as it always does.
Whatever I had thought about, or been,
was gone before the morning turned to us.