Secrets to the wind

In the fading light of a decaying port,  
where the gulls cry secrets to the wind,  
I can imagine quite easily,  
the salt-tinged air thick with stories,  
the broken dreams washed ashore,  
and the laughter of the unwary,  
echoing like distant memories.

There, I’d be, a quarrelsome shade,  
an old woman draped in the shadows of time,  
cadging drinks from rough-hewn souls,  
sipping the bitterness of lost youth,  
the fire of my spirit flickering,  
like the dying embers of a forgotten hearth.  

I picture a second childhood,  
in the embrace of a valley,  
where the earth cradles my weary bones,  
and the hills rise like gentle giants,  
echoing tales of the past,  
as the river flows, a silver thread,  
binding the remnants of who I was.

In that silence, I’d find solace,  
the decay around me a testament,  
to the beauty in the brokenness,  
each crack a story waiting to be told,  
each wave a reminder of the tides,  
that wash over the shores of memory,  
leaving footprints in the sand of time.  

So I can imagine, quite easily,  
the old woman I might become,  
a wanderer in a land of whispers,  
with a heart still beating to the rhythm  
of dreams yet to be dreamt,  
in that desolate coast,  
where every ending is just a beginning.