i am the shoreline ...

i am the shoreline ... i am the shoreline the crags of rocks and piles of flotsam running past the harbour town where you live where on so many past Sundays you would wander into my world and dip your tiny feet in tidal pools while sea crabs scrambled on stilts from under your path i left you messages then love letters written in shell fragments and seaweed but you never caught on to the script that tumbled in the white wash and you would leave for church under a broad yellow hat that glowed like the sun you would never say much except for the one time when you turned to the sea and called out what sounded like my name but i guess i can't be sure your small voice seemed so vacant in the roar of the north-easterly winds and no one heard but me of course that was long ago just a month before you married Peter Adamson and had the twins Sophie and Michelle before the years and years passed by years when you stopped coming down to the shore and gave up watching the ebb and flow of algae and fry that slipped and skipped along the beach amidst the heart stones and bright spots of sea glass half buried in the sand and just as i had resigned myself to your permanent absence suddenly you have returned as unexpectedly as you left your red coat like a flare on a dull winter's morning your auburn hair now streaked with grey and tossed back over your shoulders your eyes bright as if you were looking for something you lost so many years before and i can't help but wonder if now you have remembered and have returned at long last looking for me Copyright © Kennedy James, 2010. All rights reserved.