Lost In The Dunes, Florence, Oregon Poem by Laurence Overmire

It was a dark day
Overcast and cold
An unlikely day in the
Middle of a typically sanguine
Oregon summer

The wind swept through
The dune grass through
Each layer of clothing
Like a surgeon's scalpel, it cut
Deep into the bone

We paused at the crest of a
Towering mount of sand
My wife and I
The ocean churning
Before us
Wild and free

A powerful gust
Taking me by surprise
Knocked me slightly off my feet
And as I stumbled
I felt
My ring, my wedding ring
Slip so easily and fall
Off my stiffened finger
My flesh contracted
In the chilling salt sea air

I froze immediately
Where I stood
Thinking surely
I would find the ring
Lying but a short distance
At my feet

But as I searched
My eyes scanning every
Inch of ground
Sloping down the sea's side way
No golden glint to give its
Hiding place away

Till finally falling to my knees
In desperation
Digging frantically
Not understanding how
Such a simple thing
Which should so obviously be
Situated on the surface of
Our known understanding
The way things ought to be
Yet here should so mysteriously
Disappear

This precious object
Holding a power I hadn't realized
The bond that somehow
Forged two into one
A commitment embodied
In the perfect whole of that
Circle of gold

And my mind wandered over the dunes
Relentless like the wind
Taking me back to my wedding day
And seeing that ring first placed
On my finger
But now
It was gone, like life itself
It seemed to me
Gone forever in an instant
Stolen by a gust of wind
And buried in the unforgiving sands
Of time

Gone.

With every memory and every dream.

When I walked away
Surrendering to my fate
Broken-hearted, desolate, alone
My wife unable to console me
A stranger offering platitudes
"It's only a ring. Rings can be replaced."
But I knew I had left something far
Far greater behind
A part of myself, an innocence lost
An illusion shattered and a truth revealed

Someday maybe someone will find that ring
A curiosity and a bit of good fortune
Perhaps on an otherwise rather dull day
But the story behind it will never be told
The time and the place when it mattered
The two hearts it bound together

These things are always lost, aren't they?
And we who march on
Not knowing and not caring
Never realizing the broader significance
Of seemingly inconsequential things
Are left strangely remote

Buried in our own indiscriminate lives
Like that precious ring
In a misfortunate drift of sand.

~ Laurence Overmire