Girl With a Biege Scarf

In the mornings I would walk

Along the shore-line

Whistling 'Sous les Ponts de Paris'

It was there that I would see her

To me the skies were blue

To her grey

Lifeless and grey like the ocean

A desert the colour of steel

Often she would stop

Collect a shell

Studying this thing

Thrown up by the surf

Then she would toss it

Into the desert

Returning it back home

Wondering at its existence

Often I longed to run up

To stop her

To ask her if she'd mind

My company for a bit

But I never did do that

I left her

To what? - succumb

Victim to a preying world

I saw her once

Not her

Captured in a self portrait

So beautiful - so young

There her scarf was beige

On the beach - red

Once it streamed in the wind

Like the tail of a young boys' kite

Now she is gone

I still walk the shore

I read about her passing in the paper

I still whistle 'Sous les Ponts de Paris'

A child skips down to the sand

He takes her place

His kite soars upwards

Its tail is beige.