Oh woman
Seven years come and gone,
You took my heart with you
When you retreated with the tide.
White coral limbs
and hair of brown seaweed,
sadly adrift;
Your laugh I thought like to a waterfall
Is now the keeing of gulls,
lonely,
rising.
If brave,
I would follow determinedly
Into the cold salt world before me,
and dive deep
to recover in the dreaming hues
of fish and kelp and anemone
something of your smile.
But
you are seven years come and gone,
and though I have in time
grown accustomed to the absence in my soul
still I will sometimes
pause
and look up,
searching for you in every
liquid seal's eye.