Today at the beach I called

Look! One-two-three dolphins!

But you weren't there.

Rinsed sunlight

aligned water's edge against sand's edge

with clean precision.

Three stripes:

yellow, blue, gray.

No more. I could stare

at the sea forever.

Later I watched workmen

strain to hang an "Ocean Joy" sign in the wind.

A gull's cry seemed

almost human. I looked up from my book

at a child.

Bodies pivoted

sunwise like clock hands. Three-thirty:

toes pointed West.

I walked back

to our cottage. The day's hot glass beads

rattled in my shoes.

I saw you on the porch

shading your eyes with your

hand like an old salt.

The sun made

long shadows of our knees as we rocked

in the rusty glider.

Author Clarinda Raymond writes from Baltimore.