A Metaphor For You
The assignment was a revisitation of the previous week's poem. The previous week's assignment was metaphor.
The Turning Tide
As the sun fell back on itself
away from California
it stretched a pair of shadows up the beach,
a father and daughter.
His heavy step, closest to the water,
carved deep cracks in the wet sand.
Her tiny feet dropped soft ripples
in the higher white powder.
“School starts tomorrow.” He said.
Faintly, she smiled and asked,
“Do you remember your first day of High School?”
Looking over his shoulder at their footprints,
two dotted lines leading home, he shrugged.
“We had just moved. I didn’t know anyone.”
Further down, the daughter
studied a couple, hurriedly passing on her right.
Each too involved in the other’s eyes
to take notice of a girl’s innocent smile.
She tried to trace the woman’s steps
but her legs proved too young,
and could not match the adult’s stride
and cracked the lip of each gritty crater.
They reached a heavily trafficked pier
and the daughter wished to walk its length.
Her father tipped his tired head
in permission that she explore while he waited.
From a burnt, time-worn bench,
he tried to follow her progress down the wide, wooden pier,
but the too-bright sunset behind her
shocked and watered his eyes
so he turned away from the horizon, from the pier,
and searched the stretch of beach behind him
toward home, but the turning tide
already had erased their footprint path.
The Turning Tide
As the sun fell back on itself
away from California
it stretched a pair of shadows up the beach,
a father and daughter.
His heavy step, closest to the water,
carved deep cracks in the wet sand.
Her tiny feet dropped soft ripples
in the higher white powder.
“School starts tomorrow.” He said.
Faintly, she smiled and asked,
“Do you remember your first day of High School?”
Looking over his shoulder at their footprints,
two dotted lines leading home, he shrugged.
“We had just moved. I didn’t know anyone.”
Further down, the daughter
studied a couple, hurriedly passing on her right.
Each too involved in the other’s eyes
to take notice of a girl’s innocent smile.
She tried to trace the woman’s steps
but her legs proved too young,
and could not match the adult’s stride
and cracked the lip of each gritty crater.
They reached a heavily trafficked pier
and the daughter wished to walk its length.
Her father tipped his tired head
in permission that she explore while he waited.
From a burnt, time-worn bench,
he tried to follow her progress down the wide, wooden pier,
but the too-bright sunset behind her
shocked and watered his eyes
so he turned away from the horizon, from the pier,
and searched the stretch of beach behind him
toward home, but the turning tide
already had erased their footprint path.