dbremner

Girl With a Beige Scarf

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 if she would 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.