The Empty Beach (Day 454)

You could sling a stone from the ranch 

and it would land in the sea, plunking,

tumbling to the bottom: a submarine 

garden of undulating anemones, 

slumbering in the sway 

of the afternoon tide,

where swift-gliding fish 

flashed silver in shafts of sunshine 

or in sweeping beams 

from the lighthouse late at night

You could sling a stone from the ranch 

and hit the sea—it was that close—

but why would we have 

done such a thing, when we could 

clamber down the cliffs, run 

the length of the empty beach, 

hide in the flat-bottomed cave, 

only to wander home hours later, 

taking pocketsful of fossilized mollusks, 

in exchange for the echoes of our voices, 

and two trails of fugitive footprints.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Wendy Seltzer/Wikimedia Commons