Pause for a Poem: On the Beach with My Daughter

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).

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