Generations
So much gone with the tide going out,
so much left back up on the hill,
nothing but memories on the incoming tide
to encounter those who struggle still.
In the smell of seaweed cruelly exposed,
with all but memory lost and gone,
seaweed slippery to the leaping foot,
first dared then panicked to tear away
from the querulous presence beneath the rocks,
supposed to be she who will surely kill,
though perhaps, all along, it was merely grief,
unspoken and shaking her long gray locks.
So much to unravel from the patient tides,
few are left to tell the years,
the story of why the shock abides.