Writing Love Letters in the Sand

A number of years ago, I inherited a cache of old photographs when a great-aunt passed away. Going through them, and hearing my grandma and mom narrate some of the stories behind them, was a delight. Most of the photos were taken in the 1930s and 40s, wellll before my time.

Some of the photos, although my grandma and mom knew the names of the people in them, had no backstory. But most of the photos had titles, carefully added in the white spaces that made up the frame of the prints. And those titles burrowed into my imagination and sparked some poetic responses.

Here is one of them.

"Writing Love Letters in the Sand"

(Two Ways)

My great-uncle and great-aunt, ca. 1935

Heartbreak

I knelt, writing love letters in the sand,

my witnesses the driftwood surrounding me

and the wet pools glinting in the waning evening sun.

A broken branch for a stylus,

the wet beach for a tablet,

I scribed character after character into the earth,

hoping my message would somehow reach

the one over my shoulder.

Knowing the writing was empty,

the audience but two dunlins and

a small scuttling crab

whose home my pen had unearthed,

I yet persisted in pressing

what he took for aimless scrawl.

Joy

I knelt, writing love letters in the sand,

cheeky missives composed to the one behind me.

He, watching the scrawling from over my shoulder,

knew just what would proceed from my silly stick,

and smiled.

Blog page cover photo credit: Image by Willfried Wende from Pixabay.