But those morning walks along the seashore—
grass like matted hair of some giant old
witch seeming to weave its way from her door
across landscape into salt water—told
her he’d return. Neither sun glinting like
gold-plated armor off the ocean’s surge
nor bulky-cupped nests of loggerhead shrikes
would signal hope as she passed. Limestone urged
her on—a mammoth boulder to withstand
stormy tide, its sculpted titan’s head ten
stories high, with scarred, gnarled, muscle-tense hand
of charcoal gray binding the left eye. Then
only the right’s deep, dark socket aware,
she believed, of when he would join her there.
Roger Armbrust
August 18, 2007
