Ocean Between

Nothing here recalls your passage.
No remnant - no leaving.

Footprints there were,trailing to this darkened shore,but as you drifted off, even these were drawn behind.

Yet I wait.

I stand.
A dubious portrait of you - poorly composed, deceptive in likeness yet all that is left of substance.

You cannot return and I cannot follow.

Instead, I keep watch at this imponderable impasse.
This windswept border place - vague boundary between sea and sky and sand - now my familiar post.

I keep dazed vigil and stand a final monument to our parting.

A distant line dividing sea and sky provides the constant.
All else is noisy contradiction.
The tide increases and hammered in by an unseen will, negates itself again, slumping back.
Ancient stars dip down and brush the mirror sea with an ever-changing counterpart of themselves.

With every liquid assault, the sand beneath my feet dissolves in frenzied recant of foundation.
I am not meant to dwell here- in between.
This thin place - a crossroads only - does not sustain.
Alone and cold and stung, I cannot linger and yet stay mortal.
You and I - of separate natures now, are each native to different elements and neither can abide this third.

So, I must turn and leave this place.
Making final mark of the moment I saw you last - face obscured -your silence, abrupt and terrible.
I set aside the riddle of your voyage and resume my own.
In my own pilgrimage I look to find you again.
I too, will leave no trace here.

Gathering my squandered farewells, I wrench my eyes from hypnotic tide.
These footprints too, will dissolve in silvery web.

I leave behind only my tears- which joined to countless others, ever refresh this ocean between.