The promenade at Bray

Christian Century, July 12, 2003 by Steve Wilson

The promenade at Bray

   There is so little to see. At the thin edge
   of distance, only ocean and the paled sky.
   A tanker miles out, lumbering east.
   The grayer gray that motion gives

   to the sea's slow roll. Sand rushes over
   the saltgrass, across the bathers' path
   down to the mossgreen rocks. I've heard it
   under the dark, its implication, evenings

   when children have gone inside:
   a thought, scuttling through memory.
   By middle of day, colors weaken to white--
   blown clean, breeze-blasted. We stand

   on the shore, in the sun and wind.
   We watch and watch as the water goes.