By the Sea

I used to come in former days,
to watch your dazzle shame the sun,
to listen as you’d paraphrase
the legends of leviathan.

Once I thought I understood
your idiot metronomy,
hoped your ceaseless murmur would
approximate profundity,

but now I see a tattered bird,
a parrot raised in distant lands,
squawking language never heard,
that neither of us understands.

I would have liked to learn the trick
that whittles old glass and stone
to gems the lucky children lick
and barter on the journey home.

But all our charmed summers go;
the children put their pails aside,
voyage slowly home to know
the cunning harvest of the tide.