We are collectors on the beach.
We walk with our heads bowed
to small stones and debris
in step
our white bones hidden,
softly moving.
On the shore are fragments
of other travellers.
We bend to lift them from the wet sand,
our fingertips delicately working
while our eyes examine angles
of the end of motion,
light to the touch
and placed
in a child’s pail.
Her footprints
and mine
disappearing all the while.
From my poetry collection In Green (Guernica, 2002)
“On the Beach with My Daughter” © Robin Blackburn McBride
This poem and an accompanying thoughts appear in Elana Wolff’s book, Implicate Me: Short Essays on Reading Contemporary Poems (Guernica, 2010).