Widow On The Beach Poem by Dr. Charles A Stone

Tell me, Perdida, why you scratch
at the foam like a heron choosing crabs.

Certainly, you know the tide
will erase your calligraphy,
taking with it the messages
you have so carefully inscribed
with a bony finger in fickle sand.

Like old women chasing a priest,
shore-birds will skitter at your feet
without thought for where you have been
or why you are here, staring over
waves, your gaze swooping
with swallows from cliff to cliff.

Yesterday, was filled with hope.
Today, the empty horizon
is an obscenity. Tomorrow,
you will come again, and
you shall return after that,
for what?

Perhaps you shall plummet
like a gull into the boisterous waters
to search the beds of seaweed
for what you have lost
to the clutches of the sea.