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.