As the Tide Turns

All down along the shoreline spread, the waves
are making edgy progress, while the tide
advances like a cautious army crawls.
But still the walls of castles crumble down
All under its remorseless hard onslaught.

And still the land is taken, swallowed whole,
Incorporated deep into the sea’s
Dominion, until all up to the tide’s
High mark is then returned into the sea,
Returned to water, and submerged again.

Those footprints that we left behind are lost
Gone underwater and then all erased.
It is as though we never walked by there,
If only just what happened over there,
The memory all that will now remain.

Where we lay together hidden by rocks,
All could be erased too like that scuffed sand
That lies so sheltered from the wind and eyes
That should be scanning distant horizons
For signs of shipwreck and distress at sea.

As he scans the sea’s harder rough edges
Set out against all the sky’s watching blue
While you are down here far out of his sight
And doing all those secret things with me
The sea can erase and the sands forget.

****

'This Brief Life of Sparks - Poems by David Hadley' is available here for the Kindle.

****