In the mornings I would walk
Along the shore-line
Whistling ‘Sous les Ponts de Paris’
It was there that I would see her
To me the skies were blue
To her grey
Lifeless and grey like the ocean
A desert the colour of steel
Often she would stop
Collect a shell
Studying this thing
Thrown up by the surf
Then she would toss it
Into the desert
Returning it back home
Wondering at its existence
Often I longed to run up
To stop her
To ask her if she’d mind
My company for a bit
But I never did do that
I left her
To what? – succumb
Victim to a preying world
I saw her once
Not her
Captured in a self portrait
So beautiful – so young
There her scarf was beige
On the beach – red
Once it streamed in the wind
Like the tail of a young boy’s kite
Now she is gone
I still walk the shore
I read about her passing in the paper
I still whistle ‘Sous les Ponts de Paris’
A child skips down to the sand
He takes her place
His kite soars upwards
Its tail is beige.